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EDITORIAL
Over there
That's not where copy editors belong;
keep them at home, and save your credibility
When is an editor not an editor? Apparently, to Dean Singleton, when "copy" is part of the job title.
In the MediaNews Group CEO's latest remarks involving outsourcing of newsroom operations, he distinguishes copy editing from "reporting and editing."
"We are doing pre-press work in India and have been doing it for more than two years -- and it's worked very well," Mr. Singleton says. "We've explored outsourcing copy editing and page makeup in India, too, but we probably won't do that. I think we're finding we can consolidate within our newspapers and get the same savings we can offshore. We probably won't put any news operations there -- and we weren't talking about reporting and editing. We were talking about copy editing and page design, and I think we've found we can do it just as well ourselves here."
How's that again? Does Mr. Singleton, after all the years he's worked at and owned newspapers, still not understand that copy editing is more than just writing headlines and running spellcheck?
Mr. Singleton, whose group owns the Denver Post and a multitude of other papers, made the remarks in an interview for Denver Westword. He was quoted in one of its blogs.
We've said this repeatedly, and we'll say it again now: Outsourcing copy editing is a dangerous idea. And while we're glad Mr. Singleton doesn't plan to ship copy editing overseas, consolidating the desks of multiple papers in one location is just as risky.
Copy editors are far more than grammar nerds and punctuation wonks.
In fact, copy editors are very much like the editors Mr. Singleton envisions keeping in his newsrooms. They are often the ones who ask, "Should we be running this?" or "Do we really want to say this about that person?" or "Will our readers really pay this much in taxes?" or "Is that percentage figured correctly?" Raising these questions all while making sure, like the editors before them, that the story contains the five W's, that the lead is clear, that what the story says actually is news.
And more important, local copy editors ask, "Doesn't X street run north-south, so it can't really intersect with Y street?" or "Isn't this hospital really outside Lake Barrington, and not in either Barrington or Lake Barrington?" Local copy editors are the ones who know that embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich beat state Attorney General Jim Ryan, not Gov. George Ryan -- despite what a nationally syndicated column said.
We've said this before, too, and we'll say it as often as we have to: Copy editors are the quality control experts in your newsroom. Dispense with them at your peril.
MediaNews has already tried consolidation -- and readers have noticed. Since taking over every major newspaper but two in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, MediaNews has laid off dozens of dedicated copy editors who knew the areas they served.
Copy editors at the San Mateo County Times, for instance, have been transferred 30 miles away to Pleasanton, to a central copy-editing desk, and their numbers have been reduced.
"Copy desks are so thinly staffed that they are making an incredible number of errors," former San Mateo editor John Bowman told GradeTheNews.org. "These errors are in the headlines and cutlines, so they are glaring."
You simply can't duplicate the collective wisdom of a locally based copy desk, with its inevitably diverse and quirky knowledge of the community.
And you can't overstate how important that is to a newspaper's credibility -- the key selling point to an industry that more than ever needs selling points. Again we say, newspapers are still the place to go for the authoritative word on your community. If we lose that authoritative voice, local readers, not to mention advertisers, won't find any value in what our publications have to say. If you do away with locally based copy editing, you're putting your credibility, and your business, at risk.
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