Retiring the green eye shade
Copy editors and subeditors appear to be headed for the pasture. They’re getting laid off. The Orange County Register said recently that it would outsource copyediting to India. Roy Greenslade tells us that CityAM is getting rid of subs and that reporters will edit their own copy. You could say that’s what we bloggers do. Except the truth is that you edit me. 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.
So I’d suggest that publications should put all their articles online before publication in wiki form and enable the public to edit and annotate them (you may choose which edits to take). Why would the public do that? Why do they make Wikipedia? They’re generous if you give them a chance.
Tags: editing, newspapers
June 30th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Jeff,
I’m with you regarding the future and how much better the internet is for spreading news and information. Some people just won’t quit talking about the “death of newspapers”. I would argue that newspapers are not going to die. At least not all of them.
The following is a comment I posted to another blog on the subject. It’s not definitive but it gets the point across.
There’s been a lot of hand wringing over the pending “demise of the newspapers”. But like most everything in the whole big universe this has all been done before — a couple of times.
In the 1920’s a thing called wireless radio was supposed to replace newspapers with it’s magical ability to deliver the news to anyone, anywhere. And radio grew and grew and grew until it was a “media giant”; every bit as big as TV is today.
Newspapers did not go out of business because of radio. Newspapers survived for a whole host of reasons.
The whole cycle was repeated in 1947-1952 when television came up and was supposed to put newspapers, radio and the motion picture business under.
To be sure radio was diminished and was never again the media giant it was in the 1930’s and 1940’s but it didn’t go out of business. I can still walk out to my car right now and turn on AM radio and get some news out of it at the top of the hour. There’s still a big building in New York called “Radio City.”
Newspapers may end up like AM radio, diminished in the future. If newspaper companies are smart and adapt to the Internets they will survive and thrive. I might point out that AM radio is still a multi-million dollar industry. Newspapers will continue to survive. I’m no swami but I’m pretty sure that future people will still want the option to pick up some news and entertainment printed on paper for many years to come.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Jeff,
The demise of the sub-editor has been mooted many times. But surely in this brave new world where everyone can file a story and news can be sourced from so many different media, tweets, blogs, etc., it is the old-fashioned reporter who is now an engangered species. We’ll still need people with the skill to edit, polish and generally make sense of some of the material that comes in to newsrooms. You might say that reporters can do all of that, but I have been around newsrooms for many years in both capacities and let me tell you right now, most of them can’t.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Oops - I should have had someone sub that last comment! Can I amend it to say, most reporters would need training before they were equipped to sit on the subs’ bench. I know I did.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
[...] Jarvis talks about it here. So I’d suggest that publications should put all their articles online before publication in [...]
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
You write: “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.”
In that one sentence, you have expertly, and unknowingly, made a most valid case for the sub-editor. Talk about strangling the language.
In my 30+ years as a broadcast sub, I have met so many “award-winning” journalists who really can’t put one word behind another. They gain redemption through the work of others. I have learnt it’s a thankless task.
If I showed you the raw scripts of one well-known “Journalist of the Year”, you would never again suggest the age of the sub is gone.
What sets professional writers apart is that they re-read. They re-write. Then they seek a fresh pair of eyes. Then they publish. That explains why so many blogs are unreadable. They are largely stream of consciousness rubbish. Well conceived, perhaps, but invariably ill-executed.
I am also well aware that this contribution is badly in need of a good sub.