The editorial freedom of blogging

I hate being miss-quoted. I started my writing career as a contributing writer and editor of a corporate magazine. I managed to quit that magazine after only 2 articles. The first article I wrote and edited. The second article was not edited by me but was butchered by the corporation's executive secretary who decided she would try her hand at editing. It was a simple recount of the company's annual Halloween costume contest. How anyone could mess up an article like that was beyond me, but she managed to do it. I had some details about the make-up of one contestant and I wrote "peppermint colored eye cream", which at her hand became "eye candy," which brings on an entirely different meaning. The next little mess was the description of one of the contestants. He was the head of our machine shop and he was dressed as a drag queen. His costume was very well done and in fact he won the contest. The secretary decided to add her own words and comments to my article that were not only insulting to the winner but down right insulting to me, as a writer.

The article was printed in the magazine without allowing me to see it before it went into print. Once the magazine came out I was shocked and approached by numerous fellow employees who wondered why I wrote an article like that. I was furious. I spoke to the secretary that did butcher job on my article and demanded she print a retraction and put her name on the article instead of mine. She said the article was fine and she refused to do anything. I then went to her boss who accepted my withdraw from being a contributor to the magazine. Several months later I did hear that the secretary left the company but I never did find out why. I can only imagine that she might have done one editing job too many.

That story illustrates the fact that I hate having my work edited to the point of "butchering."  I like blogging because I have the final say in what appears in print. Sure, I make mistakes, but those mistakes are mine along with my ideas and thoughts, not some half-brained editor with their self interests at heart.