Boxed in a Byline

Journalists see things that even the discerning reader will miss. I’ll explain.

A friend who works on a national daily came over with that day’s paper last week. She’s on the news desk – not as a journalist but as the office’s glue - aka admin assistant.

She doesn’t get many opportunities to write. Granted it’s not on her job spec, but she’s been NCTJ qualified longer than me and does push ideas regularly. I push her to do this too. Maybe she’s not pushy enough.

Then again its harder to get your stuff in on a national. I wouldn’t cope – writing on a daily basis, not sleeping all night for praying that it will make it only to buy the broadsheet the next day to see your 150 words spiked.

Back to point – she had two bylines in the paper of the day. One of them was in a box, the obscure contents of which I could tell required a bright spark’s initiative to glean.

She said: “I feel silly having a byline in a box. Nobody’s going to notice it, or they’ll just wonder what it’s there for. It’s stupid”

I disagreed. It’s important. I always notice names in boxes. When you’re at the bottom of the food chain you’re not just interested in the words in the press but who wrote them.

I also note joint bylines. Those situations when you see a story written by xxxx AND xxxx. The ‘and’ is the equivalent of the person in the box. That person is the assistant to the lead writer. They did a lot of background work and their name appears at the discretion of the journalist that wrote the story.

It always pleases me when I see this - the underlings getting a chance. That boxed byline was me this time last year. And I almost cried the first time my work made it into print but my name had fallen off.

It's not stupid.