Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Why to Refuse Working as Deskman?


Sun 10 Feb 2019 | 07:57 PM
Salma Yassin

By Salma Yassin

CAIRO, Feb 10 (SEE)- Deskman is the backbone of any press institution and the one who collects articles from all editors in different sections and reformulate them.

Reformulation process is not limited to correcting writing mistakes but also deciphering vague sentences, recapitulating long paragraphs and correcting wrong information.

Finally, deskman can also change headlines and add catchy words to offer an interesting and comprehensible press material to audiences.

Despite this crucial role played by this kind of person, here are some convincing reasons why to avoid working in such profession

Unknown Soldier

Despite big efforts exerted by deskman in fixing materials, he remains an unknown soldier for readers as his name is not written in any article.

Readers also link the final- harmonized-writing style directly to editors, who have their names apparent in the article, without thinking about any reformulation done by deskman.

Disputes with co-workers

From language perspective, many sentences written by editors are wrong and should be either reformulated or completely deleted.

This is a sufficient reason behind struggles taking place with editors who always want to keep their work away from big changes.

Lack of sources

Reporters and editors can benefit from building wide sources networks,

each in his specific field, while deskman can’t do that.

Full responsibility

Editors are allowed to make mistakes while writing but finally deskman is the one who will pay for that if not corrected.

Vulnerability to diseases

Those kinds of people do work a lot; as a single institution could hire tens of editors and in contrast only one or two deskmen; who ended up having piles of articles from everywhere to be reviewed and published.

So, deskmen can sit working for long hours without having break and as a result, they may suffer from gonalgia and other problems in vertebral column.

Routine

Reporters can go out to meet sources, attend conferences, ceremonies or even travelling, on the other hand, only the office, PC screen and internet connection are deskman’s world.

This reveals how much routine and boredom dominating deskmen's work environment.