In sports, our strengths include knowledgeable staff members, good layout and design skills, and strong teamwork between desk members. Our weaknesses include inconsistent copy editing and lack of cross training. The Assistant Managing Editor for design worked on the desk for several years before being promoted . The median would be late 30s. Two to three years.
Most people leave after about three years.
We have been using DTI for the past three years and all news pages are fully paginated. We are just now getting Ads paginated. Some news copy desk staff has been hired full-time temporary for six months or a year in the past, but that is rare. We get little training now, however, the company has made training one of its major initiatives this year and is building a training room for the staff to use. In news, copy editors usually work five nights a week with split days off.