Is the term "copy editor" becoming obsolete?

[Jim Thomsen]

Each year, fewer of us have jobs that consist solely or even primarily of editing copy. More and more, we're designing pages, typing briefs and doing various Web functions.

The people who do these things are still mostly called "copy editors," but it feels to me as culturally anachronistic a term as collectively referring to our organizations as "the press."

And job titles are starting to evolve to reflect the growing emphasis on daily multimedia duties, it appears. To wit, this Rockford, Ill. posting in the ACES job bank:

We seek a copy (we call it delivery) editor to be a key part of our
18-person desk. While print production remains our staple, we also
handle video, audio, sound slides, online posting and other forms of
delivering the news that are on the horizon.

Now, we can laugh a little at this, and dismiss it if we like as an anomaly. But is it, really? Think about it. As our employers de-emphasize print and pump up their online presences with each passing year, we may well be handling audio and video, dealing with blogs, keeping the Web beast fed and fat and happy, etc. How much time, really, will be spent on the editing of copy?

Will we still be "copy editors" as all this happens? Should we be? Will we need to change our name someday sooner than later to "American Multi-Platform Content Delivery Facilitators Society"?

[Deadline Dame]

Gannett's trasformation has changed the name already. The newsroom is the "Information Center." The copy desk is now the "Presentation Desk." (a name I loathe). My boss is the "Presentation Editor." The rest of us are still on the employee roster as "copy editors."

We have a separate "data desk" which deals with all Web site matters. The photographers are part of the data desk.

Here, we copy editors edit the stories that are booked for our pages and design them all. End of night we load all our stories to the Web page and prioritize them, link related stories and attach any online assets.

And yes, we'll probably need a better title. Time for a naming contest!

[LisaMc]

The "presentation desk" at our paper is the page designers.
I realize that as copy editors take on more, and more varied, jobs that people might be inclined to change the name of the copy desk. But I'd like to hope that the name will be specific enough to somewhat reflect the job duties and not some vague, meaningless buzzword.

[David Sullivan]

A copy editor is not a video editor is not an audio editor. If those were not different skills, TV and radio would have had copy editors for years.

There is a story in the WSJ today about how newspapers are, alas, losing out in the race for online revenue, but it had a surprising point in it -- that what analysts etc. WANT the industry to do (at best) is to bring online revenue up into the mid-teens in five years, when the decline in print revenue is expected to stabilize. In other words, five years from now, 85 pct. of our revenue is expected to come from print, say people who are betting their money on us.

And then someone will say, hey, why did we let our print products slide? And then delivery editors will move out of the obstetrics ward and back into being copy editors or video editors. But it sure makes you sound progressive for a while in the interim to rename them.

[maggie leung]

Agreed. Personally, I do this job only because I get to edit copy. So if the term no longer applied to my job, I would no longer want to do it.

[MFranco]

As long as we are editing articles, as far as I'm concerned, we are copy editors, even if the definition of that title may change. For some of us, some new duties are just filling in at spots that *might* be filled when the financial squeeze is over. Maybe. ....

[JillLReed]

Copy editors here are now called news editors. We do various things throughout the week, including copy editing and wire editing. We all also slot stories/pages. We no longer have the traditional one- or two-person slot team. And the wire desk is now with us in one big team
It basically works like this:
A couple of people work A1 and Nation/World covers and jumps/sidebars. A couple pf people work Biz and Local covers and jumps/sidebars. A couple people do inside biz and inside local. Both people in each team copy edit and then check the other person's work before setting the page.
Wire editors wire and trim and copy edit their own pages then another wire editor checks that work.
Designers are still designers.
Though I do a couple shifts a week of design, most of the people in my department do only editing.
My typical week is an inside local/biz editing shift, a couple wire shifts and a couple layout shifts.