Now and then in your career, you’re going to run into your other boss. I’m not talking God, and I’m not talking your spouse or better half – I’m talking about the client or client’s company that wants control over your words.
You’re going to see these people most often just after you interview them or their employees. It’ll happen right as you’re saying goodbye, thanking them for their time, and signing off the interview. Someone somewhere is going to say it: “May we see the article before it goes to print?” Your answer in nearly every case should be “No.”
Unless you’re writing for a pseudo-publication (one that looks like a magazine, feels like a magazine, but is actually a long-winded advertorial meant to sell ad space), your editor will not appreciate or accept any article that’s been poured over by someone other than you and that editor. Let’s look at why – the editor has a specific niche market to appeal to. She knows the voice. She knows what works. She also has a boss, and she has to please that person. Plus, if someone’s legal department or board of directors (I’m not kidding) has painstakingly “approved” your copy for publication, she cannot do her job effectively because she’s not privy to whatever conversations or changes have occurred along the way. Frankly, she’s not going to care because this is a person or group of people who have just cut in on her territory, but you can see where this could get ugly quickly.
I’ve been faced with this request/demand for final approval more times than I can count. In all cases, I say it’s not the publication’s policy and if they’d like to ask the editor directly, they’re welcome to. Only a handful of times has this not been enough. In those cases, I deferred all argument or discussion to the editor. That’s not my battle to win or lose. I represent their company only briefly – it wouldn’t sit well for me to upset their potential advertising base. Let them do that.
Sometimes it gets ugly. One recent case was unnerving as this woman wasn’t taking no for an answer. She’d somehow mistakenly come under the impression that we were her employees. She insisted the moment the interview ended and well into the next week via email, that her company was not going to “allow” that article to go to print without their approval. Uh, unless I missed the memo, her company did not own the one I was working for, so the final approval she was wielding about like a sword was more like a plastic knife with a broken blade. She had no authoritative leg to stand on, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. The editor was alerted one email into her repetition of her need for control, and he handled it beautifully. He stated the company policy to her again, and as he said, she must not like women because she rolled over the minute he stated it.
It still wasn’t as awful as the time the PR dude expected me to send the article to him for approval. I told him no in every way imaginable. I sent him the quotes so his people could at least agree they’d said those things (I tape everything). He chose to create his own reality by ignoring me. When the article was not forthcoming, the phone calls started. Dozens of them. In one afternoon. I thank God for caller ID because what he wasn’t understanding in email he was surely not going to understand in spoken words. He was angry. Yes, angry. I wasn’t caving. I wasn’t following his orders. He called my editor-in-chief, who didn’t answer his phone right away. He then called the publisher and used some unsavory words to describe me. The publisher ended it with his “no”, and that was that. I got an apology from my boss for the dude’s behavior, and the publisher just shook his head and said, “Daniel doesn’t quite understand what PR’s function is yet.”
Why am I telling you this? Because there’s going to come a time in your career, if it hasn’t already, where you’re going to face this very issue. I guarantee it. If you know where you stand now, it makes it much easier to state that stand when the time comes. Oh, and if you get any lip at all, refer them to your hiring editor. There’s no reason why you need to deal with these things alone. Editors have seen it happen time and again. It’s not a stain on your career – it’s just a side effect of dealing with egos.
Just wanted to say your new profile pic is beautiful!
Thank you! I’m a bit more in focus, which shows a few more flaws… ;))