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If you're a copy editor, this is a painful read

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by LongTimeListener, Feb 18, 2014.

  1. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    Shit like this is what happens when you don't have or use editors:

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/18/for-federal-employees-office-often-closed-25-of-fi/

    The Washington Times writes a story about federal government offices being closed 25 percent of the time this fiscal year.

    They count the government shutdown, during which people are not legally allowed to do ANYTHING related to their jobs.

    They also count holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, and snow closures.

    They also count delayed openings and unscheduled leave or telework days, during which, by the way, government offices are open.

    That's not including emergency-essential employees who worked during all of the aforementioned "closures."

    Don't get me started on some of the other things written there.

    Traffic under bullshit, false pretenses is still traffic, I suppose, but it won't last very long.
     
  2. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    But that isn't a matter of getting any facts wrong. That story is written because it serves an obvious political agenda from a Tea Party rag. There is no mistake there, at least none attributable to a lack of editing. That's exactly the story they want to run.
     
  3. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    Part of editing is making sure the facts don't get twisted to fit a misleading political agenda.

    That's the main reason the Times is considered a partisan rag.
     
  4. boundforboston

    boundforboston Well-Known Member

    Which is why the New York Times (post Jayson Blair) and Sports Illustrated (post Manti Teo) both lost every single reader and are now out of business.
     
  5. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    OK, I'm not really sure what your point is, but let's go in a different direction ...

    I'm pretty sure the Times actually has copy editors. If I'm correct, that would make it not the best example of what can happen when you don't have copy editors.
     
  6. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    If you think those two publications didn't take a huge hit after those incidents, you're crazy. Even still, you're talking about publications with millions of daily readers. Plus, you're talking about good will from readers that was built up through DECADES for SI and CENTURIES for the NYT. The lost credibility won't hurt them as immediately as it'll hurt some shitty website.

    LTL, my point is I don't think a lot of people know what editors do, or what it would fully mean to do without them. Editing, done properly, is essential to any real credibility you want to have.
     
  7. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    But credibility also means something different today. If a story is basically right and the writer corrects errors that readers send in, that's usually OK in the online world. Heck, he even gets points for transparency.

    Credibility can mean a lot of different things. We think TMZ loses credibility by paying for information. Clearly the world at large does not believe that.
     
  8. JRoyal

    JRoyal Well-Known Member

    One thing that's getting brushed aside is that in this case, copy editors don't seem to be the issue at all. The low volume of stories does. They built themselves up as a site that had a large number of stories, then they decided to switch to producing "fewer, higher-quality stories." The copy editors were only a small part of the process, and definitely not the part to be blamed. Editing delayed the stories being posted, but unless they hired truly crappy copy editors, they still should have been able to churn out a decent number of stories. They made the conscious decision to put out more stories, and when it didn't work, they laid the blame on the copy editors. It's total BS.

    But on another note, there are some sites I follow for entertainment news that clearly have no copy editing. I still follow them, but I always take their reporting with a grain of salt compared to The Hollywood Reporter or Entertainment Weekly. Some are great at getting scoops, but others just rehash things they find online. I'm betting these business sites are very similar. The poorly edited stories are part of what makes me suspicious of what they post, but if they are consistently breaking stories (like Latino Review), then I can look past the lack of editing. But they better be good to make me forget that.
     
  9. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    You would really continue to read someone while consistently alerting him/her to errors in their copy? I wouldn't. And you shouldn't.

    I realize you're arguing how things ARE and I'm arguing how things SHOULD BE, but if there's no expectation of accuracy, that's the kind of thing that dumbs down everyone. We SHOULD be above that.

    And, this.
     
  10. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Yeah. I can't disagree with you there. But I don't think those standards are ever coming back, unfortunately.
     
  11. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    ACES weighs in:

    http://www.copydesk.org/blog/2014/02/19/more-advice-for-vice-why-hiring-copy-editors-is-a-really-good-idea/

    The original study:

    http://www.copydesk.org/blog/2011/03/17/aces-sponsored-research-study-says-yes/
     
  12. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    With all due respect, this sounds like a bunch of newspaper guys arguing about a paradigm that doesn't exist anymore. I was a damn good reporter. I broke stories. I knew what was going on. I conveyed lots of great information to my readers. I was considered an authority on the beat I worked. My readers were loyal and liked me. I also made typos. I might call a guy John when his name was Jim (usually from the other team). I might say someone was a junior when he was a redshirt sophomore. These things happen. Readers cared. They pointed them out or I noticed them myself in reading the story after it was posted. I corrected any inaccuracy and acknowledge the mistake.

    Sports writing today is much more like a live broadcast than a published novel. Mistakes are going to happen in live broadcasts. And they are going to happen in contemporaneous journalism. Most of them are harmless. Most can be fixed. If a reporter is making mistakes that aren't harmless and can't be fixed, then what you need is not a copy editor, but a new reporter.
     
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