Why every newspaper needs copy editors

[Daniel Hunt]

What do you think about the statements made by MediaNews' president regarding copy editors?

Joseph Lodovic, the president of MediaNews Group Inc., suggested last week that publishers could save money by consolidating copy desks. "Why does every newspaper need copy editors?" he asked in an interview with Bloomberg News. "In this day and age, I think copyediting can be done centrally for several newspapers."

Don't forget to see ACES' home page for Lisa McLendon's article.

[Daniel Hunt]

Here's another interesting article passed on to me by national board member Gerri Berendzen

http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker/2007/10/web_first_edit_later.html

[csmount]

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but ... read the letter to Romenesko from Chris Lopez on this subject; apparently KR had it in mind long before MediaNews took over:

http://poynter.org/forum/?id=letters

[Gerri Berendzen]

Many years ago when I worked for the Suburban Journals in St. Louis (long before the chain was owned by Pulitzer or Lee), I worked on a centralized copy desk.

We were in a separate office and edited copy for eight weeklies that were housed in three separate offices, the farthest about an hour away. It worked because all of those weeklies were in the St. Louis metro area, so we were actually local copy editors.

And yet, that setup lasted only about 18 months because:
1. There didn't end up being any personnel savings, because all of the deadlines were at the same time. (At the end, we actually had two more copy editors then when we were at individual offices);
2. Communication problems associated with not being located in the same office were making us push deadline too many times. (This was in the days before e-mail.)

The value of having local editors is a paramount concern when you look at things like NewsMedia’s talk of centralizing the copy desks of multiple newspapers. We know the community; we see the things that our papers write about. Yet no one can deny that copy editors can successfully edit copy from far-flung bureaus.

But add this to the list of considerations: All of these newspapers are likely to have similar deadline, so there will be no savings in the amount of work — unless these newspapers all start using the same stories. Then where is the local copy that is so important to keeping newspapers going in the age of instant online national news?

The economies achieved seem to only come through cutting positions. The theory of diminishing returns eventually will take effect.

The upshot of using such a setup as a cost-cutting tool can only be an erosion of quality, whether it be in increased errors or in pages that are less valuable to the reader. And as quality is eroded, won't we just lose readers?

As copy editors, we know our value to the newsroom (whether print or online). It is up to us to make sure that the business side of the industry truly understands our value as well.

[dfisher]

I love Lisa's column, but it's more of the same, and, unfortunately, most of the folks running the companies that own news organizations really aren't into thinking in terms of credibility. It's a squishy thing, hard to value -- even Phil Meyer struggled with how to value it in "The Vanishing Newspaper" -- and so of limited use to them (nice marketing slogan, but translate it to the bottom line).

We have to make our case as a value proposition, and it's dang hard to value a negative (in other words, the mistakes we catch don't cost the organization).

But if you want to get some idea of what value we might put on ourselves, here's a stab at it.
http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/csj/CSJOct06.html

And if you want to feel better about your job, try this:

http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/csj/CSJSept07.html

And if you really want to take perverse delight in someone else's looming little shop of horrors, go to the site below and then consider whether this is any kind of threat to your carefully coiffed local newsfolk (hint: Among the Second Life generation, it certainly is -- and that generation is going to set the standards down the road).

http://www.newsatseven.com/

And notice -- this is all being done with the help of the federal government (see the note in the upper right of the Web site about the National Science Foundation grant.) How would we like it if Uncle Sam were funding something to automate our jobs, eh?

To see it in action, click http://tinyurl.com/23q5y4 and find the recent podcast that leads with the story (it's easily to spot in the list from its title). You will need iTunes to subscribe.

(See also Mogulus. Talk about potentially being under attack from multiple sides ...)

Update Oct. 28: If you want to hear more about News at Seven, follow this link to this week's "On the Media."

[Gerri Berendzen]

Andy Bechtel of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and an ACES conference presenter, has some additional thoughts on the role of the local copy editor on his blog

http://www.editdesk.blogspot.com/

and on the Committee of Concerned Journalists Web site at:

http://www.concernedjournalists.org/

Where reporting is hyperlocal, doesn't it help to have hyperlocal copy editing, too?

Are there any of you out there who do your copy editing at a bureau? What is the upside of that?

[Jim Thomsen]

I agree with Doug. There's going to be no "shaming" newspaper executives into keeping a full copy-desk staff for credibility's sake. It may take an adverse bottom-line circumstance — a multi-million-dollar libel suit that could clearly have been stopped from happening by an eagle-eyed copy editor, for instance — to make them appreciate value.

At my paper, one thing that keeps my editor appreciative of what we do is that several pedantic-minded readers directly e-mail him with our occasional typo, grammar and factual foibles. I think those really sting him.