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Showing posts with label Rebecca Eaton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rebecca Eaton. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

How to manage editors, Russell Baker style

In Making Masterpiece: 25 Years Behind the Scenes at Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! 
  (p.129), Rebecca Eaton includes a facsimile of a note on New York Times stationery that  Russell Baker wrote to her regarding his scripts for introducing Masterpiece Theatre on January 10, 1997.
It says:
Dear Rebecca  _
These can be cut, sliced, pared, slashed, canned, pruned, trimmed, condensed, abridged, curtailed or sheared, if you want me never to speak to you again.
Yrs
Russell
[Note: Baker didn't use the Oxford comma, so there's something for those who oppose it to point to.]