Higher standards and a full copy desk
A coworker sent me
this article
about copy editors being consolidated, along with designers and other
aspects of newspaper production. John McIntyre, of the Baltimore Sun,
includes this little quote from the president of
MediaNews:
“We have to find ways to grow revenue or become more efficient by
eliminating fixed costs. Why does every newspaper need copy editors? In
this day and age, I think copy-editing can be done centrally for
several newspapers.'"
Now, I understand that consolidation can make a company more efficient
and save money. But I do think, and I know I'm parroting McIntyre a
bit, that LOCAL copy editors are necessary and that it would hurt a
newspaper to not have a local copy desk. I'm offended that anyone would
think they can do just as well without the copy desk's services. I
often walk into business establishments and am appalled by obvious
spelling or grammatical errors that I would think any layman would
catch. And when I see errors in business documents or signs, or even
menus, (or my rental agreement) I find that I have much less respect
for the business and feel it is unprofessional of them to have made the
error in the first place. Now imagine if that same misspelling or error
was placed in a common city name or spelling of a local restaurant?
There are a multitude of businesses that have a desperate need for a
copy editor, and newspapers cannot afford to be without a local copy
desk.
Copy editors catch errors every night that slip past the writers, the
city desk editors, and even other copy editors. Having people on hand
to search for errors is necessary to avoid printing misspellings,
grammar problems, even double words or incorrect locations. For
example, the whole of the copy desk here knows which streets are
avenues and which are streets, and many reporters get that wrong. And
it's not just local stories. Articles come off the news wires that
contain double words, spelling errors and incorrect quotation marks.
Multiple editors are necessary to stop errors from being printed or put
on the Internet.
These days, there are less copy editors on the desk. Consolidation is
one reason. So yes, errors do slip through, but not often. And fact
checking is one thing that many copy editors would love to do but
aren't often allotted time to double-check anything but red-flag statements.
And often
that 'check' is simply a yell or phone call to the writer to ask them
if it's correct, which in my opinion, isn't a thorough check at all.
(Side note: On one of the sections I worked with it was necessary for
me to fact check, even if it meant missing deadline. This allowed me to
catch source name misspellings, location mix-ups, wrong addresses, etc.
that I would not have had time to do on the news desk)
My apologies if this has become a bit of a rant. I simply cannot
imagine a good publication that did not have an editor present. Even on books,
where authors have creative license, editors go through every
single line before it hits the shelves.
We should hold our product up
to higher standards.