Ex-editor who suffered from PES (post-editing syndrome)

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jan/06/us-press-publishing-new-york

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Donald Forst, the former editor of three US newspapers - New York Newsday, the Village Voice and the Boston Herald - evidently suffered from chronic PES (post-editing syndrome).

In the New York Times's report of his death, his partner revealed that for the first year and a half after he departed from the Voice he spent every morning designing the front page of a broadsheet. "Every single morning," she said, adding: "Newspapers were his life."

As a one-time sufferer of PES, and an observer of others affected by the syndrome, I can empathise with Forst's condition. Designing a non-existent paper suggests his was an acute case. But it does illustrate how difficult it is to adjust after enjoying the special powers granted by editorship.

Forst died, aged 81, on Saturday (4 January). His final editorship, of the Voice, ended in 2005. He then did what so many recovering PES sufferers do - he taught journalism at the University at Albany.

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