Keeping It Simple

Amacom Books has a blog post today about copy-editing mistakes, and I have to say that if using the "he and she" construction too often or hyphenating prefixes are really the biggest problems they face, they're in pretty good shape.

The Value of Editors

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, though obviously it is to some who think editors are unnecessary.

A study finds higher engagement of readers on edited pages.  A lot higher. There are a number of political and commentary pages that I read each day that would so clearly benefit from five minutes of copy editing. These are columns by smart, well-informed journalists who clearly had no review before publishing but whose work would benefit enormously from just a few tweaks.

'We Expect Higher-Quality Editing'

I'm very glad to see an editor bucking the trend toward eliminating copy editors as unnecessary redundancies and acknowledge an increase in errors. And work toward a solution.

Hooray for the leadership at the News Tribune. Karen Peterson deserves applause. She's moving in the opposite direction from this guy.

And are we ready for a rebound?

The Autism Job Market

Oh, this is interesting. In an article about jobs for people with autism/Asperger's, journalism and copy editing come up.  I've always wondered about quirks and obsessions (I know that isn't limited to autism).

We've all seen reporters and editors with strong likes and dislikes about how they work. When I was first starting out in the business and using a typewriter, I would and could not turn in a story with a typo in the lede, even if I'd XX'ed it out. The lede graf had to be clean or I'd type it 40 times until it was right. (I accidentally just wrote "write." Computers make everything so easy!)

I have no idea how much time I wasted after late-night Vermilion Town Council meetings trying to type the lede correctly.

'Crowdsource' Copy Editing

There's a new tool* out for group editing of your blog if you want it. It's a version, I suppose, of what goes on in the group edits at Wikipedia, though, I would hope, with less rancor.

Fuddy duddy alert: I do wish there were some value placed on expertise these days, and more interest in accuracy BEFORE publication.

*New to me, but not brand new.

This Is What Changes Look Like

 

This is President Obama and Jon Favreau  going over a speech.  Everyone needs an editor.

Another Fake Memo

Coming just a few days after an apparently fake memo about the Democrats and the healthcare reform bill made its way onto several major websites, including Politico, another bogus email  fooled some more news organizations today.

So is anyone checking anything or is the rush to have stories first  trumping commonsense and responsibility to readers? AKA good journalism.

From TPM:

Medea Benjamin of Code Pink tells TPMmuckraker that the left-wing activist group orchestrated the bogus AIPAC press release calling for a settlement freeze that got picked up by several major news organizations today.

Benjamin says she and a colleague stood outside the AIPAC conference hall today dressed in suits and handed out copies of the statement to confused attendees.

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.

Setting the House Afire

This story has been floating around on a couple sites for the last two days. That Media General doesn't flat-out deny it seems to lend credence. We keep telling newspapers that this is such a terrible idea but  so many are hellbent on self-destruction--and the wreckage of people's careers--that we are simply wasting our breaths. 

Rumor: Media General Plans To Consolidate Copy Editing, Designing, Thus Cutting Jobs

By Rachel Kaufman on Oct 29, 2009 01:56 PM

We hear that Media General is planning to consolidate the copy-editing and design functions for most of its papers into a central location, which would ultimately end in reducing staff.
Several sources, including but not limited to Media General journos chatting in this thread have said that the company plans to move all its design, pagination, and copy editing crew to Lynchburg, Va., starting in the first quarter of the next year. That team will copy edit and design all of Media General's papers (except, perhaps, for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Tampa Tribune, MG's flagships) from the centralized location.
Presumably those who can relocate will be asked to reapply for their old jobs, but some won't be able to move, and, we speculate, there won't be enough jobs for everyone anyway because the whole point of a consolidation is to, well, consolidate.

In Need of Copy Editors

Complaints here about the impact of the loss of copy editors.

Editing as Sport

Frank Diamond writes about copy editing as an Olympic sport.

The Middle Ground

Deborah Howell at the Washington Post writes about copy editors.

There has to be some happy medium between having 12 people "touch" a story and having someone run a spell check that serves as editing while writing web and print heds, fitting the story to the layout and writing captions.

Nice comments from Dana Priest and others.

Online Editing

David Lee is looking to start a discussion on the future of copy editing and online issues over at Wired Journalists

On the Ground

BusinessWeek visits the Indian company doing the outsourcing for American media companies.

Note: I've been getting visits this week from an IP address in Noida. Welcome, India. Our complaints aren't directed at you.

'There Will Be Consequences'

Steve Yelvington nails it:

Death of copy editing, or death of specialization?
July 8, 2008 - Jeff Jarvis has posted an "utter bullshit" spreadsheet (for discussion only, not to be taken literally) outlining how a newsroom might reorganize to save money and focus on its strengths. One of the notable line items was reducing the number of copy editors (subs, for you Brits) from 15 to three. "Make writers edit," he declared.

It is a timely idea in a profession that just loves a three-point "trend." In London, the free sheet City AM is whacking its entire "subediting team." Down under, Australia's Fairfax Media is cutting 40 of 190 subeditors across the group. I'd mention a U.S. example as the third point, but I can't decide which of last week's layoff announcements to cite.

There will be consequences.

UPDATE: David Sullivan has an amusing take on the copy-editing issue. Anyone who blogs without the safety net of a copy editor knows well what can and will go wrong.

Eye on the Ball

Andy Bechtel spent several weeks at the Los Angeles Times and has produced this Q&A with Henry Fuhrmann, senior copy desk chief for the Times web site. A key point Henry makes:

Whatever the medium, good editing is still, in essence, getting the words in the right order and communicating as effectively as we can with the reader-user. The difference with the Web is the lack of a firm deadline (other than “right now”) and the demand for speed.

Note: I am employed by the LA Times but at quite a distance (ha ha, about 2,831 miles, Google says.) And Henry is an old pal.

Indian Report on Outscourcing

From the Hindustan Times

Similarly, Gurgaon-based Express KCS has grown from 20 to 400 employees in the past year and a half. The firm counts American newspaper chains including McClatchy and MediaNews Group among its clients. It has yet to handle editorial tasks for an American newspaper, but Chief Operating Officer Tariq Husain said the company is in talks with "seven or eight" interested papers, which he declined to name because agreements are pending.

Editors at Express KCS are often journalists hired from Indian publications, and the company works to familiarize them with American editing standards. Husain said many are between the ages of 22 and 30 and are usually single. The firm runs shifts around the clock, and employees work five shifts each week.

Mindworks also hires editorial staff from English-language newspapers and magazines. The average age is 30, and employees have on average 15 years of work experience.

Whether editorial outsourcing takes off depends on the success of these companies' initial efforts. The financing certainly makes sense: Edmonds said a copy editor at a medium-sized American newspaper makes between $30,000 to $60,000 per year, compared to between $4,800 and $14,480 at Express KCS.

But it remains to be seen whether outsourcing will cause a dip in editorial quality. "As far as making improvements to the writing – correcting misspellings and mistakes in grammar and punctuation – I don't see any particular reason why that couldn't be done," Edmonds said. At the same time, he added, effective copy editing often requires strong familiarity with the geographic area served by the newspaper, something an Indian employee might lack.

UPDATE: Blogger Ben L. Kaufman says this about copy editing:

A New York Times columnist eulogizes vanishing copy editors. Their most basic task is to make reporters look more literate, more accurate and smarter than we are. They correct our errors, draw readers with smart, contextual headlines and protect us and our papers from libel by challenging defamatory statements.

They're the last defense of skepticism, vital to the traditional multilayer editing of every story. Or they were.

No computer can replace them. I've had midlevel management invent and insert fake material in my stories, but not copy editors, and I'm unaware of most of the embarrassments copy editors have saved me. Yet I remember a very young, very new copy editor asking this then-veteran religion reporter, "Ben, how do you spell parishioner?" Seems I forgot (or didn't know about) that second "i." I'll bet she dined out on that catch. I should have bought.

Associated Press reports that The Orange County Register is hiring copy editors in New Delhi to handle some work for that Pulitzer-winning California daily. It's a one-month trial. Should be fun.

Indian English isn't quite British English and isn't American English. Peoples separated by a common language.... Can't wait until a headline uses the verb "Felicitated" or "Bobbitised." I've seen both.

A View From Australia

I have to say that the idea that we'll write something and then stand back and wait for readers to correct us has always struck me as strange and a bit arrogant. There are indeed people who have nothing else to do than read blogs and comment on them but are they your regular readers? If you're writing a story about a murder in town, do you just want to throw whatever you think happened onto the blog and wait for people to fix it? Or do you want to tell them what you know? Because, you know, you're the reporter.

Crikey seems to have a good handle on the matter.
Save the sub-editor, dying species!
Jonathan Este writes:
There has been much talk among various eminences grises of the newspaper business that the age of the sub-editor will shortly draw to a close, as cash-strapped mastheads decide they can do without a table full of grumpy pedants asking each other how to spell "by-election" and choking back theatrical guffaws as they read op-ed pieces out loud to each other.

Fairfax Media is laying off subs and looks set to follow the trail blazed in New Zealand by APN News and Media, centralising its sub-editing work to "centres of expertise".

This follows an announcement by London’s City AM that the business free sheet would axe eight staff, including six sub-editors, in order to streamline their operation.

This prompted US internet evangelist Jeff Jarvis to suggest in his blog, BuzzMachine, under the headline: "Retiring the green eye shade", that the blog would be the ideal model: "When I mess up, you tell me. And because this blog is more of a process -- a work in progress -- than a product -- the world neatly packed into a box with a bow on top, as newspapers like to think of themselves -- that works well."

If ever a line of copy needed a sub-editor to turn it into plain English, that was it.

And the "it’s never wrong for long" model doesn’t work well for newspapers -- and is even less likely to work as the pressure increases for reporters to file web updates to their stories every 10 minutes.

Those of us who have spent a little time in production are already thrilling to the frequency of errors creeping in as subs’ benches, straining under the combined weight of the staff freeze and extra, internet-related duties, are letting through some memorable horrors.

Alternative Careers

Copy editing may fade away as a newspaper career but some people will never be unemployed.

Site Takes

Excellent. Why Editing Matters has taken off and has some good entries. It is important to note that the site is not designed to slam anyone but point out what it is copy editors do.