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Newsstand: November 19, 2009
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Earlier this week the Toronto Star announced, among other changes, that it was planning to outsource some one hundred in-house, union editing jobs. In the press release issued by the union in the wake of the announcement, union chief Maureen Dawson explained that "Journalism is a collaborative effort, the product of a team of reporters, photographers and editors working in concert to produce the kind of activist agenda that has served Star readers and our community so well for so long...To remove a critical element of that work is to shortchange everyone who depends on it."
Now, one (apparent) editor at the Star has decided to show us all the benefits of collaboration. An extensively marked-up copy of Publisher John Cruickshank's internal memo announcing the changes was sent to Torontoist by a self-described "intermediary who was asked to send this for a friend who works at the Star" this morning; it's, allegedly, "the work of a Star editor."
Here's the whole thing:
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golden.
Perfect way to express yourself, be relevant, prove a point and blow off some steam. Good for them!
This is first-rate pwnage.
Well done unknown Star Editor. That really was a poorly written memo.
Brilliant!
very nice!
A great reply, but sad that it was necessary.
We need to have Frank magazine resurrected.
Fine. That was a poorly-worded memo. However, nothing in the markup indicates why the Star needs in-house editors.
Like any readers care about wonderful prose. They just want the information.
In other words, it smacks of someone desperate to prove they have a place in society.
They may indeed, and I commend their skills, but unfortuantely things are changing so much that neither a good editor, nor a cheaper outsourced one will save the industry.
Both sides are wrongly arguing whether to outsource the diesel mechanic when the car is now electric.
Editing is not going the way of diesel in an electric car world. Helping people communicate more clearly is like helping them get somewhere, whatever technology they're using.
It's absurd to suggest that simply because people are reading pixels instead of ink these days that editing is somehow passé. It's like saying that once rubber was invented, the wheel became obsolete.
It's the format that's dying, not the content or those who compose it.
You're damn right I want wonderful prose, because it makes the information easier to take in. Spare me the cliches, badinage, jargon, and kitschy symbolism. We have a rich language, the product of thousands of years of evolution. Let's use it well.
I guarantee that even a person who thinks he just wants information enjoys it more when it's engaging and well written.
Haters -
The quality of writing (and expectations of quality) in the Internet age has really gone down the tubes (look at me, but I am not a professional writer).
Further, weasel words, meaningless business jargon, and unnecessary superfluous words make memos like the above nearly unreadable. What did the English language ever do to that guy?
Somebody needs to hold writers, especially professionals providing us with information we need, to a higher standard. We need editors, and I salute this one.
Peace,
SDC
Matt, editing is not about making prose PRETTY. It's about making it READABLE. Correct. Clear in its meaning. It's about extracting the information,w hcih you say you are so keen to find, from the verbiage that unskilled writers will bury it in. Sometimes, even a skilled writer such as a journalist will bury the message in too much prose - for example, because they were writing to a 500-word brief but the piece is being cut to 300 words.
It's about fact-checking - which in turn can have legal implications - and even, as this editor's markups make clear, about branding. Not all of these issues are directly appreciable to the reader.
The case for in-house editors is that they provide a constant service in a newspaper, not an ocasional one. Outsourcing someone you know you need every day is disingenuous at best. It is NOT the same as keeping your core staff and using extra freelancers at busy periods.
Also, in terms of maintaining house style, in-house people will simply KNOW it better. They will also care more. They will have - you'd like to think - loyalty, and will possibly know the writer, and will have a feel for what works and doesn't work in the paper.
In short, they are professionals and deserve to be treated as such, given their vital importance to the enterprise as a whole.
And yes, oops, I see typos in there! And after "appreciable" I should possibly have said "by"...
Well - my comment woulda been better if it had been edited.
Every writer needs an editer, er, editor.
ZOMG, this is de-LISH!
Might be too little too late, but by god I admire a good fight when the cause is righteous. Those illiterate swine who are applauding the death of newspapers will reap the kind of society they are sowing. You want a dumbed-down world? You got it. Like the old Journalism 101 dogma says: "A newspaper relects the community it serves."
No newspaper at all reflects the Idiodcracy that celebrates ignorance and intellectual torpor.
"relects"
Tell me that was intentional.
You may posture at the Gates of Journalism's Hell all you want, but nothing will change the fact that in mass media, as all else, the public gets both what it wants and what it deserves. A friend once commented through his suds "The morons are outbreeding us." There was a time when I thought that comment humourous. That time is long past.
I know! Let's just get a copy editting software...that like, you know, like that translation stuff that works every time!
Wow. That's all I can say. Yes, as a semi-professional writer I know I need an editor especially when my keyboard dyslexia sets in. I don't ever remember producing as many typos when I was writing manually with a pen or a manual typewriter. I think people take for granted that there is some kind of automated spell check operating somewhere, without realizing that sometimes spell- and grammar-checks don't catch everything. So yehey for human editors. As an in-house writer, definitely I can attest to how much we "care" more about branding and style that reflects my organization so I hope that they win the fight for in-house on this one.
Suck it up folks, the business of the planet is now business and copy editing is superlative...
Wonderful. In a former company of writers, we once received a flyer from a company offering writing services. We did a group edit, bled all over the flyer, and sent it back offering our editing services. Funny thing...we never heard back!
alphasun, you may want to find a superlative copy editor yourself, since the word you meant to use is "superfluous".