Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33 No. 11. 22 July 1970

Publications Secretary:

Publications Secretary:

A full-time Publications Secretary responsible to the Publications Officer but under the executive control of the Salient editor. It is becoming quite apparent that the hours of the Publications Board Secretary must be formally extended (they have been informally extended for some time). The job of setting Salient is bigger than we had imagined. It is also extraordinarily difficult to prepare material in order that its flow can be maintained at a steady rate. The answer to this problem is to give the Secretary more time and more responsibility. There are many routine jobs of sub-editing and preparing material which are time-consuming at present but which could be all but eliminated were they to be handled by the Secretary.

To take a small example: any letters to the Editor published in Salient are set in a standard type, density of type, column width and leading (spacing). The paragraph indents are always the same width, the headings and signatures in the same type, and the style of introduction remains unchanged. I have to indicate all of these individual points on each letter set at present. Were the Secretary to be a full time employee, she would have time to familiarise herself with the job to the point that I could, for example, just write the word 'Letter' at the top of the original and let her do the rest. And, to a lesser or greater degree, the same situation applies to nearly all of the material in any issue of Salient. The type-style of all interviews, reviews and feature articles (of the Exclusive Brethren type) doesn't vary from issue to issue. The news stories are a little bit more complicated but much the same situation holds true. The page numbers have to be set for each issue. And so on. A full-time Secretary could take a great load from the shoulders of the Editor or (if he's got one on hand to sub-edit material as it comes in) the Technical Editor.

The Secretary should, on a day to day basis, be under the control of the Editor of Salient—this for the obvious reasons that Salient has to meet deadlines and there is an enormous amount of work in each issue. This raises the question of relations with other editors and this is best dealt with under the next heading.