Do we need all those editors? Wrong question to be asking.
I think Alan Mutter, in his recent and talked about post that poses the question of whether newspapers can afford the luxury of so many editors as newsrooms face shrinking budgets, misses the point and a great opportunity.
“How many people have to read a story before it goes in the paper?” asked a senior editor at a major metropolitan daily who is struggling to sustain the quality of his news report in an era of shrinking resources.
I think Mutter is asking the wrong question. His question is too late. It should have been asked across the board about five years ago. And to prove that he is taking some heat from what appears to be traditional Web 1.0, Media 1.0 journalists who care more about spelling in his blog than the content.
The real question is can newsrooms afford to continue to employ editors who operate within a traditional print-first box and have the we-know-what-are-readers-want mentality - to list only two of a handful of qualities that are killing the industry.
I feel that is the more pressing issue. If newsrooms employ or hire editors, or better yet subject matter experts, who continue to move forward in the new media world, encourage crowd sourcing projects, database reporting, audience participation and engagement – just to name a few things – you won’t have to ask the question are there too many editors. Their value would already be cemented in your newsroom.
By the way, I just noticed this, Mutter has a follow-up post today.
February 19th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Was that “we-know-what-our-readers-want”, by any chance? Oops, spelling not content — wrong question to be asking. But what a a nice indication of the fine line between the two. Sack all your copyeditors and you’ll have lots more inadvertent humour in your copy if you are lucky, and lots of inadvertent nonsense if you are not.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Uh, tripping over the gnarly roots can keep even the most enlightened from seeing the majesty of the redwoods.
Oh, my god…there’s a spelling error! You know what that means, he was listening to what he was writing (btw, I just spelling that wrighting but caught my mistake. Why? Because I was listening to my writing.).
This is a blog which means probably the only first-, second- and third-reader is the author. I’m willing to forgive a listening mistake now and then so I can hear what the author has to say.
That being said, I am less forgiving in print where the copy has often gone through many, many eyes …
And remember, English is a living language. Who knows, perhaps written communication 20 years from now will be like today’s text messaging. And if it is, is that necessarily bad as long as the message is understood?
February 21st, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Oops and in the sentence where I admitted I made an initial mistake, I made another … How illustrative of me!
Every author needs a second pair of eyes unless he’s in the relative security of his own (journal) blog.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Couldn’t agree more with Jason here.
Readership Institute has a good summary of the week’s discussion over this (and other topics) at
http://www.readership.org/blog2/2008/02/whats-core-to-journalistic-mission.html
To sum:
“I think there is a thread among these posts about the struggle by newspapers to resolve what’s core to the mission and what isn’t, while some of those who didn’t grow up with the tradition are mapping out ways to do significant journalism.”
Copy editors aren’t obsolete. I’d argue their purpose is more important than ever. But we’re wasting the resource by handing them more and more Agate to paginate while the world whips by outside the newsroom.