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Sonja Rasmussen - No Amount of University Teaching Can Make a Good Sub-Editor


While studying for her Bachelor of Education degree, Sonja realised that teaching wasn’t going to be for her in the long term – yet she loved writing the essays with their deadlines!
After working as a teacher for six months, Sonja applied to do sub-editor’s training at Aberdeen Journals and was offered her first job as a journalist.
After two weeks of intensive training, she was thrown into a busy news desk and learned from her mistakes.
“I worked in the days before page layout on the computer cutting back stories. I went on to do a spell as features sub-editor, where I became one of the first to use the new Apple Mac computers.”
Sonja worked on the Evening Express and Green Final, and every day was different, busy, noisy and lots of fun for her.

After having children, Sonja returned to work the night shift at the Press and Journal, she was very busy, planning 60 pages a night. But it did take a year to get used to working until 3am!

In 2016, while still working night shift, Sonja did a Masters in Creative Writing at Aberdeen University after which, she was offered a promotion to Deputy Head of Production on the Evening Express. Now second in command on the layout desk, she did not have to work quite so late!

“I’ve always loved the constantly changing environment of the newsroom. Nothing stays the same for too long which keeps my interest and I’ve always thrived under pressure.” 

Sonja says that she loves the camaraderie, as a good team is really important to make a newspaper successful. It’s a very sociable job. It’s all about chatting with reporters about their current stories and guiding the less experienced subs on page design.

“I also enjoy working evenings after the rest of the team leaves at 6, as I get peace to get on with reading”

“The worst thing about newspapers for me is seeing them fall from the glory days when people would turn to the local papers rather than Facebook to find out what’s going on.
The decline in newspapers has run alongside the rise in technology so the tools which make our job so much easier are also deskilling us in a way.
I’m glad I got into journalism in the way I did. It’s the kind of job you learn as you go and no amount of university teaching can make a good sub-editor: experience, an enquiring mind, an ability to think on your feet are skills that can’t be taught. Of course, grammatical and spelling skills, and a good grasp of the English language as a whole, are also essential.”

What advice would you give to someone who would like to get into the creative industries based on your own personal experiences?

“…Look for an opportunity like I got but I don’t think they come around very often these days. I was very lucky. DC Thomson, for example, only takes on two school-leaver apprentices, yearly - one in Aberdeen and one in Dundee… Everyone else I work with came from journalism courses at university.
You have to be prepared to learn from day one and to keep on learning throughout your career, to be nice to the people you work with when, to give praise where it’s due and to look to those with experience and learn from them and the history of the industry, acknowledging what’s led it to today.….being enthusiastic to learning and accepting change and criticism are always important - as well as being a team player and working long hours for a relatively small salary. As with all the creative industries, you’ve got to love it to stick with it.”

 Working in Journalism: https://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/journalist-job-market
Modern Journalism: https://www.mastersincommunications.org/modern-journalism/
Creative Writing Course: https://www.strath.ac.uk/research/subjects/creativewriting/
Decline of the Newspaper: https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/

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