Malecia Walker

Copy Editor

Malecia

“I love editing because I can proudly look at the smooth finished product and say, ‘I did that,’ even if the outside world doesn’t know that I did it. I like that every workday is different, and I’m constantly learning from the things I edit and from my colleagues.”

Off the clock

Reading
Working out
Baking

Malecia has more than 20 years of experience, mostly in daily newspapers. She has edited a variety of work, including national, local, and international news, travel, and business content.

From eighth grade up until graduate school, she thought she was going to be a reporter. But since she often pointed out errors in the daily paper that the University of Missouri’s journalism school produced, the professor who was the managing editor suggested she try editing. She took a test to be a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund (now Dow Jones News Fund) copy editor and landed at The Boston Globe for a summer. From there, she was a copy editor and layout editor at The Kansas City Star before moving on to The Dallas Morning News, where she ultimately was the assistant travel editor (who mostly lived vicariously through the reporters).

After moving to New York City, she worked at Black Enterprise magazine but boomeranged to newspapers as a staff editor at The New York Times, spending most of her time there on the business news desk. Before becoming a Dragonfly, she was senior copy editor at The Appeal, a nonprofit digital news outlet that focuses on issues in the criminal legal system. She wrote the organization’s style guide, taking the evolution of language into account. In her first full-time position outside journalism, she worked on the publications team for the tech company Toptal, editing content geared toward professionals in finance, UX/UI design, and human resources.

A member of ACES: The Society for Editing, Malecia has a bachelor’s degree in communication arts from Hood College and completed one year toward a master’s in journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She lives outside New York City with her husband and son. She reads just about anything that’s interesting, enjoys running, and is hooked on listening to podcasts and power zone training with Peloton.

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