PressEthic

As the essence of mainstream media is challenged and constantly evolves there is incessant analysis on how to survive and remain relevant within the industry. Readership is down so the bureaucracy discusses possibilities for expanding the demographic, increasing advertising, embracing the web...

But the most outlandish remedy yet - getting rid of editors?

That’s difficult for most in the industry to conceptualize. It's just the way things have always been - a writer has an editor. And we need them. Or do we?

John McIntyre addresses this topic in an article on Poynter Online. As the president of the American Copy Editors Society and a journalism professor, McIntyre believes in the value of the editor.

This dangerous nonsense can only be put forward by people who lack an understanding of what editors and copy editors do. (That category, regrettably, includes many editors, managing editors and publishers.) Detecting and correcting error – error of fact, error of grammar and syntax, misjudgment of tone or taste – is invisible. What gets caught does not get published.

McIntyre discusses an article in The New York Times that details a suggestion that arose at Knight Ridder in response to an impending corporate collapse. The notion was raised that the organization could save money by consolidating the copy editing for all the newspapers. Knight Ridder eventually axed the idea but not everyone disagrees with the concept.

On his Common Sense Journalism blog, Doug Fisher quotes a column by Roy Greenslade of The Guardian.

But it’s plain, and getting plainer all the time, that this revolution is allowing reporters and writers to speak instantaneously to readers and online users. There is less need for the middle man (and woman), though I’d guess that many a sub-editor who has laboured over a reporter’s tortured prose, sloppy fact-checking and poor spelling will disagree. In truth, though, all journalists in the future will need to have all those skills. Hundreds of thousands of bloggers post perfectly readable copy hour by hour without the need for anyone to write a snappy headline or insert a semi-colon. They are the future, and both their input and output seen in purely commercial terms, is cheap.

It may be cheap - but it is not necessarily accurate, unbiased, honest or reliable. I would argue that an editor's job is not only to correct spelling, but to ensure credibility. Everyone can benefit from a second opinion, only the truly dogmatic believe they are beyond reproach, and do we really trust that type of thinker to deliver the news? In truth, a reader might enjoy direct and unedited contact with the writer - but at the risk of accuracy?

McIntyre is not so sure either.

So go ahead. Reduce, centralize, abolish the copy desk. Give readers that unmediated contact with the writer. Keep your lawyers on retainer and your checkbook close at hand.