Topic

Messages

Proofreaders Assignments

We are currently working on reorganizing/restructuring our proofreading department. Right now, we have 2 full time proofreaders and one freelancer that comes in as needed. Each proofreader reads anything and everything that comes in and is not specifically assigned to one or two particular clients. This has been extremely inefficient and doesn¹t allow one person to become an expert on any particular client, which is why we are thinking about restructuring this department. It would be very helpful if I could get feedback from some of you on how your proofreading departments are set up. For example, is one proofreader assigned to one client? is everything read by one proofreader or more than one? Any information would be appreciated. Thank you,

Denise Gianotti Coyne Communications

We use a couple of freelance proofreaders, and fax stuff to them. We do tend to use the same proofreader for a particular clients work. They begin to become comfortable with that accounts "speak". In addition, we also look at which proofreader does better with collateral vs ads.

Shelly Constantz

We use outside vendors here, for proofreading. However, at my old agency we had an in-house proofreader for many years. In the days before desktop publishing, this made sense because there were specific points at which to involve her...ie: copy, type galleys, mechanical. However, with the onset of desktop publishing we found it harder to not create a bottleneck in the editing department. The account execs wanted to involve her everywhere...copy, comps 1-27, mechanicals 1-3, etc. It became inefficient. As hard as it was, the agency had to let her go. We then used her from that point on as an outside vendor. Concerned about costs, account execs limited her involvement to copy and to first round of mechanical and final round of mechanical. Most versioning of mechanicals and comps leading up to mechanicals were proofread internally, with account execs having final responsibility over anything that was submitted to a client. If you have several proofreaders on staff and want to keep them on staff, I would recommend you assign them to specific accounts since every account has its own nuances. However, they need to be able to pick up overage for each other in busy times. Again, in these cases, the account execs would take final responsibility for those copy elements which are client-specific.

Kris Latta