Ware en the Warld Are the Edditors?

By Austin Bates

Well, obviously they aren't here looking at my blog, otherwise they would have caught the various misspellings I made in the title of this very blog post! But while I make light of a growing situation in the media world, especially that of newspapers, it is a serious issue, raising questions and concerns for many involved in the news reporting industry. Deborah Howell originally posted her thoughts on the issue concerning the loss of copy editors, especially with the Washington Post, where she reports from.

Of course, it's no secret that the newspapers are steadily, and seemingly, irrevocably, losing sales; NewsBlog reports that newspaper advertising sales were down 9.4 percent last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America, which is the worst it's been since records began in 1950. But of course, some critics would point out that newspapers have consistently had profit margins of up to 25%, which is far higher than any other industry, even the hated and despised oil mining industry. However, I think it's clear newspapers are losing money and conscious of this fact, and their possible future: which is that they may not have one. After all, how many times are youths known these days to sit down and read an old-fashioned printed newspaper unless they have to? Who has time for that, when other concerns, like Facebook and MySpace, are out there?

Regardless, newspapers like The Washington Post are reacting to changing times by dropping many of their copy editors; Howell reports a 40% loss of editors, or 32 of 75 editors have left or been "bought out". Apparently, newspapers are seeing less of a need to have so many people make sure that what they put out is so perfectly refined and ready for consumption. With more and more media outlets becoming 24 hour sources of information and entertainment, newspapers are also apparently attempting to join this trend, and seeing editors as somewhat counter-productive to this goal (one way you can put something out faster is by having less people check, edit, and revise it).

While Howell does a good job providing plenty of testimonials and examples of why copy editors are so important in the newspaper industry, and how many people appreciated their services, one thing she doesn't explore is something I wonder about: what will become of editors in general? What kind of message, or change to society, will having fewer and fewer editors produce? Media as it is already poises itself constantly to find every little mistake that some celebrity, or politician, or president, or government official, or corporate executive might make, and then paste it all over every outlet they have; tabloids make their living off of this sort of thing. So if newspapers themselves are dropping editors, raising the risk that they'll make more mistakes of more types, what message does this send? Further, newspapers are one of the last objective sources of information left, and if they are thinning their methods of maintaining objectivity, what happens to our news? Further, what about what kind of message, and information, this might transmit to youths in this changing media world? What will we be teaching our youth if our newspapers become about as well manicured as most text messages?

Now, some of these concerns may be unwarranted or exaggerated, but surely there's nothing good that will come out of dropping the number of people that will correct newspapers and maintain their integrity on the front line. And having reporters more carefully edit their own material won't work; any one who's had to write any number of essays before can say from experience that you can't catch half your own mistakes, and even after a day or so of rest, many errors may remain overlooked.

Basically, editing is what makes the difference between a poor source of information, and a good one. Validity, at least for me, is first and foremost based in presentation, and that includes whether you took time to make sure your words and sentences are composed correctly. If fewer and fewer people are doing this, how will anyone be able to find a good, objective source of information?