Primum non nocere

A Columbia University statistics professor is complaining about a copy editor who changed all of his "for example" usages to "e.g." Aside from adherence to a stylebook or to save every possible bit of space, I'm not sure why someone would do that  but I wouldn't knock it on the basis that it's Latin and not English. Not in a scholarly publication.
Any thoughts?
I could do without the "Pinch-hitter syndrome strikes again" snottiness, though. Doesn't really work, either.

Subjunctivitis

For the truly bored copy editor at work on the holiday weekend, you can brighten your evening by checking out the debate over this sentence. Language Hat has an especially adorable comment.

Here's the sentence:

Which is correct? Based on my facial expression right now, you would think I [were/was] excited.

It Isn't Going to Stop

Another 78 go out the door.  

From editorsweblog
Due to their restructuring earlier this month, the Toronto Star has cut 78 editing jobs, reports Bloomberg.   The 117 year-old paper has just announced that it is outsourcing all of its copy editing to Pagemasters North America, a provider of editorial services owned by The Canadian Press.  The switch will save the paper C$4000 000 annually. 

A Word Every Editor Should Know

There's a word for everything.

It describes "a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start."

You know that look. That's the one copy editors give the city desk when there's no copy forthcoming.

Oh, Yes, Copy Editors Were Useful

George Rodrigue, managing editor of the Dallas Morning News, writes the following in a roundup of responses to reader complaints:

Andrea, a reader in Duncanville, writes to ask why she's noticed some improper word choices in the paper lately. "It looks like the DMN is using some automated spell-checker, but that system is weak because it may overwrite with a correctly spelled word but insert one that is wrong for the context," she said.


If ever there were a testimonial to the importance of copy editors, the unsung heroes of newspapering, this is it. We have in fact cut back on copy editors over the past few years, in an effort to keep as many reporters as possible on the street. We've tried hard to keep our very best copy editors, and our team is among the finest in the business. But they're working incredibly fast, trying to write compelling headlines on deadline and to polish stories that are often filed just before deadline. Automatic spell checkers are useful tools, but there's no substitute for human judgment on word choice. My favorite recent example was a story that meant to ask whether a football player was sufficiently "genteel." As printed, the word was "gentile."

Those Darned Copy Editors

My favorite part of this Fox errors story is how, once again, a copy editor gets blamed for the latest screwup.


That is not to say a copy editor didn't make the latest mistake. I didn't see just how any of the errors manifested themselves: was it material spliced into others, or a quick hit with a bad chyron?


Or maybe just a quick wrong tape? Based on my year working at another network's website, I could see how using an erroneous slug, such as tape identification number, for example, could result in something getting onto air when it shouldn't.


Trying to slow down the pace and get rid of extra unnecessary work to focus on simply getting the story right definitely sounds like a good idea. I hope newspaper editors inclined to add multiple subheads, extra graphics, story summaries and web versions of everything are listening.

Hitting the Nail on the Head

The Colorado Springs Independent has a stinging piece on Freedom Communications and its outsourcing of staff work.

This editor really says it all but read the whole piece.
 "Companies always screw their employees, unless it's a company who realizes its value is in having intellectual property," says Al Lewis, award-winning columnist for Dow Jones NewsWires who was Gazette business editor in the mid-1990s. "Engineering firms don't do this. If they don't have engineers, they're not an engineering firm. The greatest asset of a newspaper is its knowledge base, and you've got that knowledge base walking out the door. Newspapers have been so willing to let those people go."

Journalism and the Internet Discussions

From Infotoday.com:
The Federal Trade Commission has scheduled workshops  Dec. 1-2 in Washington, D.C., to explore how the internet has affected journalism. The event is free and open to the public. More information.
Representatives of print, online, broadcast, and cable news organizations; academics; consumer advocates; bloggers; and other new media representatives are participating. The questions and issues for discussion are listed in a Federal Register notice.

Psychic Polls Alert

The Hill doesn't know how to read polls

As someone noted, you can't get good poll results from something that hasn't happened. Trying to guess the effect of a Senate vote on the health care bill when it has't occurred yet is foolish--why even report on them?

The News Services

With the close of the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service on the horizon and now the relocation of The New York Times news service to Florida and losses of jobs with both-- I'm beginning to wonder about the value or at least structure of news services. At a news service, an awful lot of work goes into organizing, coordinating with multiple contributors, matching story and photo slugs, scheduling story budgets against different time zones, etc., much of it unseen by its clients unless there's a mistake.

Do newspapers need a service that provides material in that way, which slows the delivery but ensures  a coherent package?

I would say yes, that as long as print relies on packaging and not necessarily instantaneous delivery of the news, it makes sense. But news services might need to rethink the actual delivery and whether they need stories to arrive in standard wire-service format or whether a simple FTP package might do the trick. News services seem a bit old-fashioned at this stage.

Revenge of the Copy Editor

HA HA HA! A copy editor strikes back.

 A copyeditor at the Toronto Star greeted the news that union copyeditor jobs were being eliminated in favor of freelancers by heavily editing the publisher's memo announcing same, pointing out all the ways in which the publisher could benefit from editorial aid.

Covering the Big One

I just wrote a review of a collection of war correspondents' writings covering World War II.  "Reporting World War II" is an absolutely terrific book, though I have only the first of the two volumes.

For good, non-cheerleading and touching, often prescient work, it's hard to pass up Ernie Pyle, E.B. White, Margaret Bourke-White, James Agee, Dorothy Thompson, Edward R. Murrow, William Shirer and many others.  You will note that many of the foreign-based correspondents could see clearly what was coming, even if some policymakers wern't paying attention.

Compare and contrast with coverage of, say, the invasion of Iraq.

That's not to say that there was no propaganda--Agee found a great deal to criticize in war movies, and the problems black soldiers faced went practically unmentioned in the mainstream press. There's no hint that anyone thought that the Allies weren't the good guys. Still, it's great stuff. 

Kudos to the Library of America for its inclusiveness.

My favorite remains "This One is Captain Waskow," a Pyle classic.

Welcome Scholarship Donations

Very happy to report that a certain book editor at a large paper in the Midwest has agreed to donate the proceeds of her next newsroom book sale to support ACES scholarships. She, as do a handful of others, offers the newspaper staff cut-rate prices of books sent her for review, and proceeds go to a nonprofit/charity. This time, it's for ACES. (I'm holding off naming her and the paper until I can clear it with her.)

Any copy-editor-friendly book editors who want to do the same, please see go here or just email someone on the Education Fund board. It's a pretty painless way to clean off your desk and help journalism students hit hard by rising college costs.

Note that the deadline for applying for scholarships is rapidly approaching. Students, take your best shot.

Privacy? Be Prepared for a Surprise

The rush to connect everyone online sometimes gets out of hand.

Sunday, I corrected an erroneous comment made on an NYTimes.com story about the ROTC on elite college campuses. I read every comment, thought them fascinating but was disappointed in one referring to Kent State. Since I knew, ever so slightly, one of the four killed that day, I corrected the suggestion that he had been among the protesters; he was, in fact, an ROTC cadet just passing by when he was shot in the back from more than 100 yards away. In the comment, I used the pseudonym just to put some distance between myself and some of the more militarized people who like to pounce on those who oppose their views.

Monday, suddenly, my ROTC comment showed up on my Facebook page. I didn't put it there.

For more than six months, I have been trying and completely failing to get unsubscribed from Timespeople, a feature of the NY Times that allows people to share what they link to, their comments, etc. I hated the feature as soon as I understood how it was going to work--if I want people to know what I'm doing, I will tell them. I will send them a link, e-mail them, whatever. I do not want a computer algorithm automatically telling the rest of the world every move I make.

But that is, in fact, what happened. Not only does the Times system have information about what I do on the site, it also has information about my Facebook, Twitter and other accounts, apparently because I use the same email to sign in to many of them.

When I realized that the comment had popped up on Facebook, and couldn't figure out how that happened, I called the Times, which noted that multiple other social sites where I use the same email are listed on that Timespeople account that I've been trying to shut down. So not only does the Times continue to compile and redistribute my information on its own site, it now sends it out elsewhere.

It is unclear how long this has been going on--I've never seen it happen before--but it is simply unacceptable. I do not post rants, threats, explicit remarks, anything, that would be a serious problem but then that is not the point.

A violation of privacy is a serious matter and that is exactly what has happened here.

The Times customer service line is trying to straighten this out, again. We shall see.

Disclosure: I worked as a copy editor at The Times for about a year back in the 1990s, and still have pals there. This is nothing personal.