One Little Letter

Another in a continuing series of complaints about why we need editors and not technologists writing headlines. Even for the web.

 I suppose if two bands faced off, we would have a riff.  If you can't get through this link, consider yourself saved by a paywall.

Opinion: Riff between branches 'almost unprecedented'



When President Obama called out the Supreme Court, he set the stage for serious debate. ...

Not for Everyone

I just stumbled on this sentence from someone objecting to the Teach for America program. Since I am by nature suspicious of programs like TFA that are billed as the solution to complex problems in the U.S. education system, I was inclined to agree with her until this:

And, unlike, say, a job as a copy-editor or an architect or an art dealer, when you are a teacher it really matters that you be good at what you do, since there is no one to catch and correct your mistakes before they’ve poisoned your students’ learning experiences in some way or another.

Well, goodness, where did she get the idea she knows what a copy editor does? And maybe she ought to climb down off that horse.

Crash Blossoms Head Your Way

Ben Zimmer, writing in The New York Times, raises the issue of ambiguity in headlines, warning against dropping words or writing them in a way that leaves confusion in people's minds. Of course, words that can be read as either verbs or nouns tend to be the most confusing, and it's what often makes Yahoo or HuffPost headlines difficult to comprehend.

Then there are others that invite ridicule: the classic
may be this report on arable land:

Russian Virgin
Lands Short Of
Goal Again

Or, The Hartford Courant headline during World War II:
40,000 GIs Enter Florence

And though I didn't write it, after setting it aside, I accidentally allowed this gem slip through my fingers, to go to production which almost immediately put it into a back page of The Courant; it became famous through its pickup by CJR's Lower Case, Best of Category:

Rosemary Hall
Gets New Head

referring to the new headmaster at Rosemary Hall prep school

The gem, though not quite in the same category, was the misuse of Roman numerals in The New York Times. Reporting on the decision to use a civilian ship for military purposes during the Falkland war. In early editions it read:

Queen Elizabeth II
To Be Used by Troops

Later it was changed to: QE 2

Fix It

I keep reading this figure, that a Washington Post story once got "12 touches" and that sounds absurd and it seems to get thrown around as an excuse to do dumb things.

But who are the 12? If it's a complex story that has gone back from assigning editor to assistant managing editor, back to reporter, back to assigning desk, then graphics, layout and then various people on the copy desk, well, that's one thing. But I don't think that's an argument for eliminating copy desks or chiefs, as the Post is busy doing these days, but rather for fixing the system. Or maybe the story was a piece of garbage that merited lots of touches in an attempt to salvage it. We've all seen those stories, haven't we?

I once worked on a 13-part series that was two years in the making that had gone round and round through various editors. It was literally in proof stage on a Friday night, for Sunday edition use, when the executive editor decided it needed a major overhaul and started doing things like pulling the second sidebar for day 3 into the mainbar for day 8 and so on and so on. It was a nightmare. The overtime made me rich. But that is the fault of someone other than the copy desk.

Regardless, Tim McGuire, who has been a supporter of both the American Copy Editors Society and the team concept, makes some important points here. I just don't know if anyone with a finger on the budget will listen.

Given the destruction of newspapers and the many new models for delivery of news, there is room for a redeployment of people's skills, certainly. Smart editors would figure out a way to identify and then best use those skills since people aren't interchangeable parts.

But the wholesale destruction of quality control is absolutely idiotic. Copy editors have been in the forefront of technological changes for as long as I've been in the news business. It is insanity to disregard those skills and ability to adapt by getting rid of them. Over the years, I have periodically encountered senior editors who professed shock at suddenly discovering how rough their reporters' copy is. I think we can see some of what happens without editing when we look at websites where editing is a secondary consideration, at best.

Really, if you don't care about the quality issue, what are you doing in the business? Go do something else. I'm tired of the woe-is-me-I-have-to-cut-my-staff-again attitude. Do something to maintain quality or get the hell out because your product is pretty much so thoroughly devalued that no one wants it.

Hell-0 Scan Comments

Commenting will return once I figure out whether the new Haloscan system is worth paying for.

Another Swing and a Miss at the Huffington Post

I've reached the point where I can only assume that the Huffington Post is deliberately misstating the facts of stories. It happens too often, when the stories are clear, for it to be an error.

I guess this is a case of wanting to grab eyeballs instead of reporting accurately. Eventually, that lack of accuracy catches up with an operation; if you poke around the Web, you'll see a lot of criticism of HuffPost headlines. I've simply reached the point where I don't believe the headlines until I've seen the story.

Here's today's latest:

Ben Nelson Now Says Health Care
Reform Was 'Mistake'

No. He didn't. It wouldn't make sense. What he said was that making health care the priority in 2009 was a mistake. Here's the story:

Sen. Ben Nelson said Tuesday it was a mistake for the Obama Administration to take on massive health care reforms in 2009, and suggested efforts would have been better spent addressing the economy.

This was an easy one. Move the "now" which is superfluous anyway, over after "reform" to indicate a time element. Write, "Ben Nelson Says Jobs, Not Health Care, Was Bigger Priority"

Or any number of other choices.

Please, HuffPost, hire some copy editors. It's not as if they're not available. You could start by looking here:
New York Times News Service

Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service


Minneapolis Star Tribune


Media General

La Palma

Ideas on the March

John McIntyre opened his blog to Michael Bullwinkle, a student who has put some careful thought into the state of copy editing and those who practice the craft.  He sees, and encourages other to see, opportunities that might become available to copy editors as standard newspaper and magazine jobs disappear.

Here's part of what he wrote:

What I wonder is if perhaps one could take the basic model of these overseas copy-editing establishments and set up a similar little agency of native-speaking editors in the United States. To start, all you would need is a loosely connected group of work-at-home freelancers who had a common website and e-mail and divided up the editing accordingly. Billing could be done based on number of pages edited or specific contracts depending on customers’ needs.

I commend Michael for thinking about it and finding the perfect example in a TED talk, and John for opening his blog to a smart young guest writer.

Beyond that, here's what I think.

Several months ago, I floated a similar idea I was calling an editing combine that would offer its services to newspapers or other publications. Through ACES and other connections, several of us know editors in every time zone and imaginable work schedule. And there's no shortage of unemployed or under-employed highly skilled people available. The combine would take assignments, helping mostly smaller publications, by providing quality editing at a rather low cost because people would be freelancers and not staff. Someone carried the idea to AEJMC for discussion but we heard nothing further. Those who were talking about it had deep reservations about several aspects, though were not put off by the daunting task of organizing such an operation because, after all, we'd launched ACES with little more than sheer determination. Eventually, we parked the idea for further thought and the reality of having to make a living intruded.

But we haven't completey given up, though serious obstacles come to mind:

• Technological issues could be severe. As someone who worked from both a newsroom and home office for many years and dealt with major changes in editing systems on both production and delivery ends, I can tell you that no one format--say, using MS Word--would work for everyone. Trying to make stories appear in the right format could be excruciatingly complex and frustrating and sometimes simply never work.
• A combine/agency assumes that publications, print or online, are interested in quality work. We see evidence running in both directions. As a marketing device, we discussed taking on a web site that clearly needed help and gently prodding them to hire us through repeated editing reviews of their work. Quite a number of sites, both traditional journalism and others, could benefit from this, though they might not be receptive for some time, if ever. But if you see what passes for reporting at some of these sites where story churn is king, you know simultaneously that your services are needed but, appparently, not wanted.
• Our combine editors would work cheap but not as cheap as those in India. If you haven't explored the freelance market, especially those run by services that invite bids from around the world, you're in for a shock. People are offering to work for literally $1 an hour, and that's your competition. You can find work that pays better, certainly but it is often rooted in some connection or a local company with a short-term need. In in the rich days, when newspapers were practically printing money, too many didn't want to spend on finding ways to improve quality, such as staff training. So that means we'd have to pitch primarily on financial grounds. And that means:
• Contributing to further staff cutbacks. If our services were accepted and led to several others losing their jobs, the result would be counterproductive. Do we want to be responsible for costing someone a job with benefits, even if we could offer that individual freelance work? I don't think so. Others may disagree but this would be a deal breaker for me. And I see no way to enforce an agreement with a publisher who initially agreed that no jobs would be lost if he signed with such an agency.

Those are the primary negatives I see to such an editing combine. I don't think that such an organization is out of the question but I'm not sure it would be so different from companies that already exist to offer freelance editing. The major differences would be, I suppose, that it would be populated primarily by journalists, and be available for daily, rather than more long term,  assignments.

There are individual freelance jobs out there and, to repeat myself, I like the idea of engaging a web site and offering services. Too many, however, take the publish-first approach and, in fact, pride themselves in speed over accuracy, quite literally telling writers to skip the editing and legal checks in favor of posting. But perhaps we could focus on the sites that are a bit more thoughtful.

In recent weeks, I've been suggesting to people that should more newspapers continue to fold, and more editors be thrown out of work, that perhaps we could at least apply our values to the web. I simply do not believe that everything we learned to do in our careers will prove to be of no value in the coming years. It appears that we will have to find ways to put them to work, to preserve and use what we know.

To get rather hyperbolic, I find editors facing a kind of Dark Ages. In "How the Irish Saved Civilization," the Irish monks are credited with saving classical works from marauding Germanic tribes, transcribing and preserving the works for later generations. We, too, can put our values and knowledge to work, rather than just fading away, if we figure out the right approach, jettison the mourning for the way things used to be, and step forward with new ideas.  There is, after all, no newspaper copy editor I know whose job hasn't undergone changes thanks to new technology, the arrival of the internet and new publication demands, so it's not as if we haven't experienced change before.

So, congratulations, Michael, for starting the conversation again. Anyone else?