Behind-the-scenes of the Ewha Voice
There are people other than reporters who feel excited to see the new issue of the Ewha Voice. These unseen contributors to the Ewha Voice include the copy editors and the staff at the print shop Mac Media. Although they do not have bylines in the newspaper, they provide both praises and critical views for the publication of the Ewha Voice.
The Manager of Mac Media, Hong Chun-pyo has been working as the printing partner of the Ewha Voice for 11 years. He became a partner "by chance", when the Ewha Voice had to change its print shop due to the unfortunate friction with the former print shop. The shop is located near the Euljiro 3(sam)-ga Station, which is a 20 minute subway ride away from Ewha.
"I was in a complete daze at first because I took this job so suddenly and the paper was written in English, which is so unfamiliar for me," Hong said.
However, he did not feel bewildered for long, as he soon found fun in working with the newspaper. All of the Ewha Voice reporters and his staff used to stay up all night at the print shop, correcting errors and checking the photos.
"After staying up a night, we ate haejangkuk (Korean hangover soup) and headed home," Hong said. "I even received a lot of phone calls from their parents complaining that their daughters are being kept too long in the print shop. But it wasn't me who was forcing them to stay all night. The entire Ewha Voice staff was working so hard that no one went back home before they got the perfect print."
Since the students are not trained as professional layout designers, sometimes the layouts seem a little amateur like. But he says that’s what makes him feel refreshed as well.
"The pages of the Ewha Voice look friendly to me since they are designed by students. But I think it could be even better if they try more eye-catching and creative layouts for readers," Hong said.
Bewilderment could also be an appropriate word to describe what professor Heather Willoughby (International Studies) felt when her student asked her help for the Ewha Voice.
“My student, who was the chief editor of the Ewha Voice and majoring in International Studies, came and asked me to help them. I did not know what to do at first, but I soon started proofreading and copy editing.”
Since then, she has edited around 200 articles and witnessed both the good and bad times of Ewha Voice. She receives about three to four articles on Friday after reporters hand their third copies in. Depending on the student's writing ability it normally takes 30 to 45 minutes per article for her to correct grammatical errors, suggest clarification and give some other advices for the article.
"In the past, I felt really frustrated since I had to correct the same errors, like misuse of until and by, over and over again," Willoughby said. "However, as the Ewha Voice made its style book in 2008, those kinds of problems have improved. In that way, Ewha Voice has progressed a lot and is in a maturing process now."
Occasionally, she also encounters articles that should be completely re-written, but that is certainly not the norm. Except those cases, she has always tried to "keep the student’s voice as much as possible".
“I don’t want the Ewha Voice to be my paper. It is the students' paper. I try not to influence the feel of the language too much,” Willoughby said.
Different from Hong and professor Willoughby, professor John Carpenter (Media Studies) offered himself as the copy editor of Ewha Voice in 2009, based on his background in journalism. He worked as a copy editor at the Korea Joongang Daily and The Korea Times as well as was a reporter in the United States.
“Articles I receive from Ewha Voice are not that different from what I saw in the Korea Joongang Daily and The Korea Times,” Carpenter said. “The quality of articles depends on the reporter’s ability.”
Editing articles from the Ewha Voice sometimes makes him frustrated, when he finds errors in the structure of the articles.
“A lot of time I rewrite the leads, bringing something from far down in the story up and put it on top. Sometimes the tops of stories are overloaded with less interesting background which belongs toward the middle or end of the story,” Carpenter said.
When he corrects the articles, he writes his comments in red or capitalized letters with square brackets. Professor Carpenter usually edit as if he was working at the Korea JoongAng Daily, where copy editors have “no hesitation to rewrite”.
“I've wondered if there is grumbling from the reporters about stories being rewritten too much,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter still feels enthusiastic and excited to see the published Ewha Voice since he “got a stake in it”.
"But usually I don’t get anything back when I send the articles back with my comments,” Carpenter said. "I hope I could communicate more with the Ewha Voice reporters about their articles, so that the errors in the articles could be fixed right away.”