Caleb

For an internship application I filled out recently, I had to write an essay about a time I had to swallow my pride. I chose to write about what it was like to have an article edited by my managing editor, Caleb Ogilvie. This is that essay.

My favorite part of journalism is the writing. I love poring over old documents, and there’s nothing quite like a good interview, but for me, the highlight of pursuing the story is when I sit down to put it all together. Writing comes easily to me, especially when I’m excited about what I’m writing, so putting words on the page isn’t just engaging: it’s fun. Therefore, when I deliver my drafts to my editors at AWOL Magazine, I usually feel pretty good about them.

But no matter how confident I feel about my writing, Caleb Ogilvie stops me in my tracks. As our managing editor, Caleb’s role mandates that he reads every draft we write. In doing so, he picks over them for accuracy, attribution, and objectivity, and he is excellent at his job. As a result, Caleb makes me swallow my pride every time I open Google Docs to several dozen of his comments.

Caleb’s simplest notes usually focus on syntax. Sometimes, he says it’s too figurative or idiomatic. Other times, he tells me to say the same thing in less words, or to shuffle around the order in which separate facts are delivered. The messages he leaves in these annotations usually range from clipped to brusque. But while Caleb can sound harsh, he is fair. The copy editing is simple to address, and sometimes, I can disagree with him and he’ll take my side. But his fact checking, so to speak, is where it gets gnarly.

Caleb is always asking where I found my information. Any hint of subjectivity or analysis is usually met with a single word: “attribute.” These comments, while always right, are invariably frustrating. No matter how obvious my own point might look to me, Caleb points out the gaps in my sourcing that I am obliged to fill. And his structure edits are worse; they feel the most personal. The way I choose to lay out my story is always deliberate, so it stings when someone tells me it doesn’t work.

But while Caleb’s edits are very demanding, they are even more rewarding once they are fulfilled. There is no better way of improving my writing than going back, reading every sentence, and pondering what I was thinking when I wrote it; Caleb asks me to do that. His guidance has sent me down new lines of questioning and had me rebuilding entire sections from scratch. Without Caleb, for example, my writing about generative AI’s ecological impact would not have included hard data from my university, and the story would be worse off.

Caleb doesn’t just make my articles better. He makes me a better journalist. Because of people like him encourage me to do better, and because the country needs local news, I’m still writing articles and working on my writing. To become the best journalist I can be, I need to swallow my pride and take criticism. And I’ll do it as many times as it takes.