By Annie Albin University of Nebraska-Lincoln Johnna Hjersman knew she didn’t want to be a reporter. When she worked at the Daily Nebraskan as a college student, her shy nature clashed with her need to call sources for articles. “I wasn’t ready to be a reporter,” Hjersman said during an interview in Omaha. “But then I started doing copy editing and I was like, ‘This is actually awesome.’” From her start as a soft-spoken journalist, the 27-year-old has now found her voice in her role as copy editor for the Living section at the Omaha World-Herald. Hjersman grew up in Alliance, Nebraska, and graduated from Alliance High School in 2006. Four years later, she graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Hjersman said she is grateful for associate professor of journalism Sue Burzynski Bullard, who pushed Hjersman to take the Dow Jones editing test, which helped her land her first internship. “It was really a succession of things starting at UNL,” Hjersman said. Her first post-college job was at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, where she was a copy editor for two years. She moved to Omaha after a college friend told her about a copy editing job at the World-Herald. Hjersman said she built on her editing skills at both jobs. She has expanded her editing skills beyond just copy editing. She designs page layouts, works with editors and selects and places wire copy and photos. “Those are skills I don’t think I really had in college,” Hjersman said. Hjersman said that every editing job is different. When she worked at the Democrat-Gazette designers and copy editors were separate. At the World-Herald, she copy edits and lays out pages. Hjersman goes into work at 1 p.m. and leaves around 10 p.m. She spends most of that time at her desk editing and working on Go, the World-Herald’s weekly entertainment magazine. “That is kind of like my baby,” Hjersman said. Hjersman spends a large part of her day looking for stories on wire services to fill space in her section. She looks for stories relevant to current events or ones her readers would enjoy. Hjersman also places and finds art for her section. Most stories will be sent to her with photos attached, but sometimes Hjersman searches for content to fill her page. She creates charts for her page as well such as the Top 10 downloads or Top 10 iPhone apps. “You just have to jump in and go,” Hjersman said. “(On) the copy desk you really have to learn a lot of different skills. You might be doing something different every day, which is crazy, but kind of cool. You don’t get bored.” Hjersman enjoys editing because she knows she is fixing a story and making it better. She can fix the story so readers do not get distracted by errors and from there they can trust that the article is clean, accurate and fair. “That feels good to me, making it the best story it can be,” Hjersman said.
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A note about the content: This site showcases the final projects of University of Nebraska-Lincoln editing students. Each semester, students pick a journalist or communications professional to profile. This is their work.
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