Sub-editors are inclined to dyspepsia and grumpiness, writes Walkley Award-winning feature writer John Hurst in his seminal 1988 book The Walkley Awards: Australia’s Best Journalists in Action (John Kerr). Beloved Sydney Morning Herald sub-editor Seumas Phelan (1938-2016) notes, “Partly it stems from the sedentary nature of their job. At times they long to be back in the field, doing what reporters do, again. Partly too, it’s the frustration of having to edit sloppy copy.”
“Sub-editors are inclined to dyspepsia and grumpiness,” Walkley Award-winning feature writer John Hurst wrote in his seminal 1988 book The Walkley Awards: Australia’s Best Journalists in Action (John Kerr). Beloved Sydney Morning Herald sub-editor Seumas Phelan (1938-2016) “Partly it stems from the sedentary nature of their job,” he went on. “At times they long to be back in the field, doing what reporters do, again. Partly too, it’s the frustration of having to edit sloppy copy.”
Perhaps you couldn’t blame the traditional subs for being grumpy back in those pre-spellcheck days. If your job description was to make other people shine, weed out their grammatical flaws, spelling mistakes, and be scary enough to make them file on time, without even a byline, you’d be that way too.
Over the 70 years of the Walkley Awards, tens of thousands of nameless Australian sub-editors have taken reporters’ slapdash copy, filed fast and furiously on deadline, and polished it into Walkley-worthy work. Hurst, a former journalist with The Australian who won his 1968 Walkley for reports filed in the field from the Vietnam war, acknowledges the generosity of sub-editors in his 450-page tome, noting a prize for recognising the best headline was only introduced in 1960 (four years after the inception of the awards).