I worked at BusinessWeek Magazine for just shy of a decade, proofreading articles under deadline pressure for grammar, style, and consistency of content.
Believe it or not, I was also the person who checked the math on BW’s corporate scoreboards, compiling and cross-checking data for quarterly rankings using Bloomberg terminals, a pocket calculator, and my own personal brain. I was also entrusted to compile data and copyedit the magazine’s monthly round-up of top-selling business books.
As you’d imagine, poring over BW for so many years rendered me fluent in biz-speak, equipped to write and edit business content—and to help brand a variety of financial institutions, products, and services (work I often took on as a consultant for Joe Viverito and BrandmakerExpress in New York).
That said, my business savvy is difficult to flog on my website because— even after nine years as a magazine proofreader/copyeditor—you don’t leave a copydesk with portfolio clips.
But here’s what my BusinessWeek boss, Larry Dark, had to say about me on LinkedIn:
Similarly, I’ve been deep in the trenches of editing in the sciences, but I never thought to hold onto the marked manuscripts for future use in a portfolio slideshow. Fortunately, Google has revealed that some of the ICIMOD scientists I’ve edited have credited me in their published research—Thanks, scientists!—and many of these articles engaged issues of economics and financial development.
The Development of REDD+ Safeguards in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu, Nepal May 2017.
A Multi-dimensional Assessment of Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services at Inle Lake, Myanmar, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu, Nepal and Forest Department, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, Myanmar, July 2017.
And, as far as presenting complex material in laymen’s terms, I wish everyone everywhere could come take my creative-writing workshop, The Mechanical Physics of Narrative. Physics for poets—for real!
Merrill Feitell 