I have a fondness for copy editing and copy editors.
I learned more in my copy editing class than in any other course I took at Texas Christian University back in the 1970s (hat tip to my instructor, Jim Batts). I learned as much in my two years on the Des Moines Register’s copy desk, also in the ’70s, as I’ve learned any two years ever in my career. And I worked with an extraordinarily talented group there.
I got to be a pretty good copy editor and self-editor (I’m the only editor of this blog, though I often read a post to Mimi and occasionally she will read a post before publication). But still, copy editors saved me from embarrassment many a time in my reporting days (at the Omaha World-Herald, Sue Truax once asked gently about a drought story if I meant to say the city was encouraging water conservation rather than consumption. As embarrassing as that was, it was so much better than seeing it in print).
Copy editing is the quality control function of a newsroom, and quality matters. But the economics and workflow of the news business have changed, and copy editing must change, too.
Digital First newsrooms in Denver and the San Francisco Bay area have changed their copy-editing operations, as Steve Myers reported in some detail for Poynter. We’re trying two different approaches, each with fewer copy editors and fewer reads before a story is published online or in print. The Denver Post no longer has a copy desk; copy editing is handled by assigning editors (with some former copy editors moved to the assigning desks). The Bay Area News Group still has a copy-editing operation for all its newsrooms at the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., but some stories will get only one read there, rather than two, after being read by assigning editors.
The changes are part of our effort to design Digital First newsrooms. We want our copy editing to improve content before we publish it digitally. We want to process copy more efficiently for print newspapers. And we want to shift more of our staff from processing content to producing content.
I agree with my friend Charles Apple that everyone needs a copy editor. All newsroom jobs are changing. That includes copy editors and it should.
Journalists who have treated the copy desk as a safety net need to take more responsibility for the quality of their own work. And journalists who have specialized in copy editing will play multiple roles in a Digital First newsroom.
Neither of these developments is entirely new. No matter how many levels of editors we had and how many mistakes they caught, embarrassing errors always made their way into print (I kept a file of classic errors for years). Copy editors have always been multi-taskers; we handled layout duties in my day and more recently copy editors have handled design, pagination and web duties in different combinations.
Every job is changing in Digital First newsrooms. We are trying to design a new newsroom for the economy and challenges of the digital marketplace.
Advice for copy editors
Here are my suggestions for copy editors seeking to contribute to Digital First newsrooms:
Work quickly. Speed is essential in digital journalism. You need to assess a story’s needs quickly and address them efficiently. Every copy desk I worked on or supervised had good editors who worked at different paces. Slow but steady copy editors need to pick up the pace.
Focus on what’s important. Copy editors’ most important work in editing copy is to check facts, clean up grammar, fix misspellings, exercise news judgment, ensure clarity and raise legal questions. Your newsroom doesn’t have time today for you to rewrite stories that another editor has already edited. Don’t rewrite a clear sentence just because it wasn’t written the way you would have written it. That was never good editing and the Digital First newsroom doesn’t have time for it. Quick and obvious fixes for AP style or your newsroom’s style are appropriate. But don’t belabor style issues. They matter more to you than they do to readers.
Develop aggregation skills. Back in my days on the copy desk in Des Moines, I often spent most of the evening compiling copy from multiple wire services into a single story for our readers (the Jonestown massacre, Three Mile Island and upheaval in Iran were some of my most memorable stories). We didn’t call that aggregation, but that’s what it was. As aggregation and curation of digital content become more important to newsrooms, some editing jobs might combine copy editing with aggregation. Copy editors might be strong candidates for jobs that focus on aggregation or curation. Those jobs will make strong use of copy-editing skills such as news judgment, clarity and verification.
Develop social media skills. However your job evolves, social media are likely to be important. Copy desks often have a mix of social-media adapters and resisters. I’ve heard copy editors dismiss the relevance of social media to their jobs. (Not true; when I was in Cedar Rapids, copy editor David Lee got help on Twitter by crowdsourcing headlines and news judgment decisions.) In a newsroom where multi-tasking is more important, copy editors can’t afford to be dismissive of social media.
Master digital headline-writing. As much time as you’ve spent mastering the art (and it is an art) of writing print headlines, they are not nearly as important now as digital headlines. You know how to write print headlines; write a good one quickly, rather than laboring extensively to come up with a perfect headline. (Rare exceptions for historic stories that demand a headline that captures the import of the event without stating old news.) One of the best ways to demonstrate your value to a Digital First newsroom is to excel at SEO, search-engine optimization, which just means helping people find your stories. And by the way, this is just good journalism. A print headline’s primary job is to get people to read the story. That’s the job of a digital headline, too, but your first reader is often a search engine.
Say goodbye to obscure pun headlines. Let’s be honest: Newspapers have been way too tolerant of puns in headlines. A great pun can make a great headline, but too many pun headlines are silly and difficult to understand. You might get away with that in a newspaper, when story placement or an accompanying photo also attract readers. But a pun headline that doesn’t have the right keywords is deadly for digital traffic. A headline that uses the right keywords can still be clever and even funny (you want to invite clicks after the search engine delivers your link to a results page). But don’t value humor or cleverness above SEO.
Blog. Whether you do a lifestyle blog for your website about a hobby or blog on your own time for colleagues about copy-editing issues, blogging can help your career (it sure helped mine). A copy editor’s best work often goes unnoticed. Calling attention to a big mistake you caught is a great way to make enemies. Headlines don’t carry bylines. But a blog is yours. It’s your chance to stand out, show some personality and show your value as a digital journalist.
Train colleagues and bloggers. Training is a great way to demonstrate your value in a Digital First newsroom. Copy editors should be teaching their colleagues and community bloggers the skills they have learned (and are learning). Lead a workshop in self-editing or in writing SEO headlines. That may seem counter-intuitive, like you are trying to help the newsroom get along without your copy-editing skills. But training demonstrates your value and underscores your expertise. If your newsroom is changing or doing away with copy-editing positions, the person who’s teaching editing skills is going to be a strong candidate for another position (and may seem almost indispensable).
Take initiative. I have encouraged all kinds of journalists in Digital First newsrooms I have visited to take the initiative in proposing how their individual jobs should change to help our transition from the traditional print focus. That advice is as important to copy editors as it is to any job. Even if your bosses don’t follow your suggestions, your career will benefit from joining the conversation about how jobs in your newsroom need to change.
Don’t protect the past. Defensiveness is part of the copy desk culture. You are the newsroom’s last line of defense against errors. You uphold standards. You will have valid questions about the changes your newsroom is undertaking. You can and should engage in the discussion about the changes. But focus your contributions on solutions, not on defending a past that, however much we loved it, isn’t returning.
Nothing guarantees success in today’s newsroom upheaval. But copy editors who take this approach will demonstrate their value to their colleagues and to the people making decisions about who does what in their newsrooms.
Copy editing tips for all journalists
If you’re a journalist who’s benefited from the multiple layers of editing that newsrooms traditionally had, you need to take more responsibility for the quality of your content.
If you’re tweeting or blogging, you probably already are publishing content unedited (and probably have suffered the embarrassment of some errors a copy editor would have caught). If we work out our editing systems right, we will give most non-live content at least one edit before publication, maybe more. But the inescapable fact is that your copy is going to get less editing than you’re used to. So you need to be a better self-editor (these tips also might be helpful for assigning editors who need to become better copy editors):
Master SEO headlines. You may be writing your own blog headlines. You should be suggesting you’re own headlines for stories that you turn in. Writing headlines also helps you determine whether your story is well-focused. If you can’t write a good headline, maybe you should work a bit more to get to the point of the story.
Make one last read through your copy. Once you think you’re done, whether you’re writing a tweet or an investigative project, read it through yourself, not for rewriting or fact-checking (this comes after fact-checking). This final read is just for clarity, voice, spelling and grammar. For instance, in reading through this blog before publication, I caught the you’re in the paragraph above that should be your. I left it in to make this point. It was too good to fix in that particular spot.
Read aloud. I am sure I didn’t read that drought story aloud. Conservation and consumption may look a lot alike, but that’s the kind of error that jumps out when you read your work aloud.
Use an accuracy checklist. You are responsible for the accuracy of your content. Use a checklist to make sure everything is accurate.
Improve your grammar and word usage. Schools don’t teach grammar as well as they used to, so even the smart students with strong writing skills who go into journalism often have weaknesses in grammar, spelling and word usage. Yes, it’s better to learn these matters in your youth, but you can still improve as a professional. I have blogged on some grammar matters that confuse many journalists and the American Copy Editors Society has lots of resources to help with grammar and word usage.
Spellcheck (but don’t rely on it). There is no excuse for failing to catch errors that your computer can point out to you. But don’t routinely change potential errors highlighted by your computer (some of them are right). And don’t make the computer your only spellcheck. Use the dictionary to check the spelling (and usage) of words you aren’t sure about.
Make every word count. I blogged last year with advice for writing tight copy. By planning to write tight, setting a brisk pace and being demanding in your rewrite, you can turn in cleaner copy. (Yes, I note the irony of making that point in such a long blog post. The difference is that I write for journalists, not the general public. Experience shows me that my best-read pieces, with this audience, quite often are long. Still, it’s time to wrap this post up.)
Continue the conversation
I will be writing several leading copy editors that I know, inviting them to respond to this post. I’m most interested in their advice to copy editors and other journalists who need to be improve their copy editing. But I also welcome any criticism (or support) you may have for our approach. I will publish their answers as guest posts or link to posts they may write on their own blogs (Charles Apple had harsh words for DFM on his blog). I also welcome your advice and responses in the comments here.
Update: John E. McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun, a giant among copy editors, sent me a link to his blog post about the copy editing changes at the Denver Post. Updated again, May 30: John has responded to my invitation to join the discussion I started here. I encourage you to read the full post, A future for copy editors. I comment in a separate blog post, but mostly I summarize John. Read him unless you want to read both.
Update: Mindy McAdams has also blogged a response. Thanks to all who have commented on the post (please read the discussion there). I also appreciate all the tweets about this post. I won’t include all the retweets here, but wanted to share some of the conversation:
.@stevebuttry makes some great points about copyediting. But it might be a hard pill for many copy editors to swallow. bit.ly/LhtVNx
— Elana Zak (@elanazak) May 25, 2012
Practical, realistic advice for newsrooms from @stevebuttry, our advance scout on the digital transformation mission: ow.ly/b9CNG
— Kerry Powell (@KerryPowell) May 25, 2012
I’ve been called worse.
RT @stevebuttry on why copy editing (and editors) must change: bit.ly/KL3tcE They are inestimably fine people. That? Not changing.
— susan clotfelter (@susandigsin) May 25, 2012
Like everything else in life.Copy #editing: It’s taught me a lot, but it has to change | wp.me/poqp6-2au via @stevebuttry #journalism
— Media Buzz Mixers (@MediaBuzzMixers) May 25, 2012
Copy editors — and copy desks — need an upgrade. Here’s a good start: stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/cop… (via @stevebuttry)
— Chris Lusk (@chrismlusk) May 25, 2012
Yes! (There’s a be-your-own-safety-net remark) Copy editing blog, @stevebuttry: wp.me/poqp6-2au via @editormark
— Catherine Szabo (@kat_szabs) May 25, 2012
“Newspapers have been way too tolerant of puns in headlines,” says @SteveButtry: bit.ly/LMCl1N
— Mallary Tenore(@mallarytenore) May 25, 2012
Guilty RT @nytjim: Yep @mallarytenore: “Newspapers have been way too tolerant of puns in headlines,” says @stevebuttry: bit.ly/LMCl1N
— Kelly Fincham (@kellyfincham) May 25, 2012
@kellyfincham I think a lot of ppl are guilty of this. Many punny headlines won awards this yr bit.ly/HCYf4N cc @SteveButtry, @nytjim
— Mallary Tenore(@mallarytenore) May 25, 2012
@nytjim @mallarytenore @SteveButtry SEO is mere marketing. Good headlines like telegrams give gist of story, make reader hungry for details.
— James McCaffery (@jwmccaffery) May 25, 2012
@stevebuttry @nytjim @mallarytenore Granted. I was thinking of Huffington Post headlines, which are intentionally uninformative.
— James McCaffery (@jwmccaffery) May 25, 2012
@mallarytenore I disagree with @SteveButtry. It’s our duty to excell at creating puns that are SEO. Alliteration also deserves attention.
— Mark Loundy (@MarkLoundy) May 25, 2012
@stevebuttry I thought you crusty, hard-bitten, cynical, old editors weren’t supposed to be so sensitive. @mallarytenore
— Mark Loundy (@MarkLoundy) May 25, 2012
@15MinutesBlog @stevebuttry One of my faves: “Houston, we have a problem,” when Sunday Indo music critic trashed Whitney album in 90s
— Kelly Fincham (@kellyfincham) May 25, 2012
Shorter @stevebuttry: No one outside the newsroom cares about your craft, its the readers’ needs that matter bit.ly/LMCl1N
— Ken Paulman (@kenpaulman) May 25, 2012
A timely & relevant post! Could you go a bit more into headlines, please? For example, what are some tips for writing a SEO-friendly headline? Thanks!
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Sorry. I should have included this link to my SEO tips (will add it in the body, too): https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/7-keys-to-seo-how-to-help-people-find-your-blog/
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copy editors need to learn how to code enough to add hyperlinks to stories, create sidebars, manage previous stories and create online packages, they need to be able to add photos and graphics that are produced from art departments. copy editors need to become drivers of sites who work in a team to produce it, managing living content via revisions, not creating series of single stories. the whole job has changed, the new needs are content management – the copy has to come in clean, correct – so editors can focus attention on producing good content experiences out of text and reported information that engage and make sense on digital devices. editors are curators and gardeners of ongoing subjects, they don’t just move products down an assembly line anymore. they play in a live band.
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Just a bit of copy editing here, Steve. Check on your use of “you’re” and “your” in following sentence. I make this error all the time. More often I screw up “its” and “it’s.” I will forgive you for ending a sentence with a preposition, but will copy editors?
“You should be suggesting you’re own headlines for stories that you turn in.”
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Thanks, Dick. Did you read the next paragraph?
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He cover this in the subsequent paragraph. “I caught the you’re in the paragraph above that should be your. I left it in to make this point. It was too good to fix in that particular spot.” Amen.
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Dash it! I meant ‘covers’.
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Steve: Before I became a reporter, my first job was as a copy-editor at a small newspaper that is now part of Digital First. The biggest obstacle to quality editing there was the fact that we were also responsible for page design and layout. That wasn’t so difficult when I was first hired as the fifth full-time copy-editor, but I was one of two at the time I moved over to the city desk, and neither the paper nor the reporting staff had gotten any smaller.
Even after I had been promoted to the newly-created position of online editor, I was still expected to design pages 3 days a week, because there just wasn’t anyone else to do it, and getting the print edition out the door was the priority. No one ever cared or questioned how SEO friendly a web headline I wrote was, but if we sent A1 15 minutes after deadline, you can bet we’d be getting an e-mail from the publisher.
I would’ve been fine to pass the page design off to someone else; I hated it. It felt like playing a losing game of Tetris over and over again. Trying to escape the design responsibility was a big part in my decision to switch to reporting.
I just wanted to point that out since I didn’t see page design mentioned in your post at all. At the paper I worked at, I know I couldn’t have done everything you talk about here and lay out 24+ pages a day.
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Actually, Patrick, I did mention design, both that layout was part of the copy desk’s duties in my day and that design and pagination duties have been assigned to copy desks in recent years. I did not discuss the current/recent workload in as much detail as you did, though, and I thank you for that.
Our changes in workflow and organizational structure are still under way. This is actually an effort to separate copy editing from print design. A Digital First newsroom should be creating content first for digital platforms and should edit that content well. A print production team should make the newspaper from that content with minimal further editing. We’re not there yet, but we’ll get there, and I think we’ll produce strong, well-edited digital and print products.
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Steve: You offer a lot of great advice that echoes the theme of our training sessions at ACES conferences. Broaden your skills, be a coach in the newsroom, be a leader/early adopter … take all the skills that make you an outstanding copy editor and apply them to all platforms. Don’t just grouse about how hard times are; make yourself a central part of the solution.
Can you imagine a photo editor who refuses to learn anything about video ever being successful in this digital era? Heck no. And the same goes for copy editors. Those who refuse to expand their skills — or just sit and wait for their company to come up with a plan and resources to make them more useful — are just painting a big bullseye on their heads.
In an ideal world, every story would get multiple edits by amazing editors and copy editors who are paid massive salaries to be guardians for the public. And we’d be drowning in outstanding reporters And we’d have piles of great equipment so we can do our jobs with lightning speed from anywhere in the world. Instead, we all live in reality.
The advice I would add: Get excited.
While I hate to see good people lose their jobs, I don’t hate all that’s happening in our industry.
The technology is exciting. Posting content to the web is instant gratification. It’s fun.
It’s a thrill to take a story with flat performance online and give it a better head, add some art and multimedia — plus get it out there in social media — and then see traffic take off.
I, for one, like editing stories minutes after something’s happened rather than six hours later. I love the rush of deadline at any time during the day. I love the art of blending SEO and news judgment to craft a great headline. I love being able to run ALL the excellent photos with a story. And I’ll always feel indebted to digital if it means the death of pun headlines and 30-inch board meeting stories that no one will ever read who isn’t getting paid to.
There’s a lot to get excited about the changes in our industry. Embrace it. Get excited about it. Help shape the future of journalism.
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Here’s just one of a few things that haven’t been mentioned in many discussions about copy editing: They are our built-in focus group. They are more like readers than most journalists, and they experience the paper and web copy more like real readers do, cognitively speaking, than anybody else in our business. You wanted a real, well-parsed reaction to your new web design / photo slideshow / turn of phrase / torturous business graphic? You could ask a copy editor, because they didn’t have a dog in the fight. Office politics didn’t happen on their shift. It was their job (admittedly, sometimes their joy) to tell you when something wasn’t working, even if it was the last thing you wanted to hear.
Uncaught errors? Yeah, that’s a worry; can people who aren’t doing it full time gain the subtle antennae it takes to catch all the billions that should be millions and spot the “pubic” that should be “public”?
But it’s the potential for uncaught, unclothed emperors that haunts me. Copy editors taught me to care enough to fight the big things. Will we have, or make, time for those fights?
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Valid questions and points, Susan. Good copy editors do ask questions on behalf of the public, and there is notable value in that. However, it’s also true that copy editors care more about style and punctuation than the public. Not saying that’s bad, just that we shouldn’t regard them as a focus group without noting that they are far from a representative sampling. And, if we engage the public well, we’ll have some of that focus-group benefit throughout the publishing process.
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[…] Steve Buttry, director of community engagement and social media at Journal Register Co., just wrote a long blog post about this. There’s useful information there for students, journalism educators, reporters […]
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Steve: Much of the advice you offer to copy editors and reporters (work quickly, focus on what’s important, make one last read of your copy) was good advice when I started working as a copy editor in 1982.
And a lot of the rest is something that groups like ACES — of which I am a board member — have been talking about for several years now. My ACES colleague Teresa Schmedding already has done a good job of detailing that. I’ll just mention that the session I helped lead at the 2012 ACES national conference was called “The Copy Editor as Curator,” and I specifically talked about work I’ve done compiling digital timelines. So I agree with the advice on developing new skills.
Of course, all journalists need to change to better meet the demands of new delivery systems. But change has been a constant in the news media. I suspect few would want to go back to the days of using typewriters.
Also, I think if you look at many of the nation’s smaller newspaper, you would find they have operated in this multi-skill system for a long time out of necessity. At the small newspaper where I work, we make the best use of everyone’s skills and do good work with a small staff. I’ve never worked for a paper with the luxury of four or more reads — or one with a dedicated backfield. Most stories get two reads where I work and the copy desk also handles much of the work assigning editors would at bigger papers.
But while I find the future exciting, I am bothered by the inherent message that the masses will put up with bad quality and we don’t need to worry about things like misspelled words anymore. Why would I, as a reader (on the web or print), trust you if you can’t spell my name right or provide me with the correct location for an event?
Let’s be clear, the bottom line is driving staffing shifts as much as the digital now and future are. Yet I know from my work experience that you can still post edited copy fast on the web. I think news organizations owe it to their audience to figure out a way to make that happen. Some of what’s happening out there right now feels more like giving up than developing a better model.
Is the current copy flow model the best? Most likely not. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water (and I’m fine with the cliche here).
Finally, while I’m not negating the need for change, I have been questioning the model that says you can get more feet on the street by cutting copy editors and having reporters edit each others’ copy. I’m positive there are plenty of reporters who can do a good job editing each other. But if they are doing that, they aren’t out on the street, are they? And since reporting and copy editing have a different focus, wouldn’t it be better to keep that modern-skilled copy editor in the office and keep reporters devoting all of their time to reporting?
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Thanks for the thoughtful response, Gerri. Not sure that you were saying it was my “inherent message that the masses will put up with bad quality and we don’t need to worry about things like misspelled words anymore.” But just to be clear: That’s not my message. We damn well better provide quality and be sure that we spell words right and get our facts right.
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Steve: No, that wasn’t directed at your specifically. And it wasn’t a take away from your post. (I’ve always considered you a friend of copy editing.)
It’s a reaction to many comments I’ve read that seem to say readers will put up with things on the web that they won’t in print. If that’s the case, it’s only because we are training people not to expect digital quality. My point is that new models need to recognize the necessity of quality.
I sometimes wonder if in the drive to make the bottom line of an individual property better today, some aren’t sacrificing the entire news industry’s future. So I’m saying, yes develop new models. But do it thoughtfully.
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Thanks, Gerri.
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I’m happy to help make your point about using spellcheck, but not relying on it. Spellcheck won’t catch “your” when it was supposed to be “you.”
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I agree as well, Susan. Copy editors read like readers; that’s critical. The “slot” used to be the last edit in newsrooms (or page proofer). In today’s digital era, we should count updating after reader comments/reaction as the last step. They still catch so much that we don’t.
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Thank you so much for this post – and especially adding that tip for all journalists to read their copy one last time! It would save so much sometimes – on the copy editors end and on the readers end.
A great, weird, tip I learned a long time ago – once you’ve read it once, for content, read it again, but backwards. It’s amazing the things I find after reading a story from bottom to top.
As for SEO headlines – can’t wait for the staff to take Karen Workman’s webinar on it soon!
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I had not heard the read-it-backwards advice. Will have to give that one a try. Thanks, April!
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I agree with Steve about the value of reading aloud in the process of self-editing. When I read blog entries aloud to my Mimi (that is, to my husband Jonathan), I often catch things I missed when composing.
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In my reporting days, I noticed that I was writing better stories on the road than in the newsroom. I figured out it was because I read aloud in my hotel rooms. But we feel inhibited reading aloud in the newsroom. But if you’re talking into the phone, it doesn’t look like you’re talking to yourself.
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This is totally an education, training and management challenge. We all see the value of copy editing, but the discipline needs to be integrated more tightly into the process from the beginning. Writers, photographers, tweeters, salespeople, coders, etc., all have to be good copy editors.
Journalism is an increasingly complicated profession. Just as pilots have to be just as good at following FAA regs as they are at actual pilotage. Journalists have to individually take responsibility for more of a process that once was assembled from discrete parts.
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[…] Steve Buttry, director of community engagement and social media at Journal Register Co., just wrote a long blog post about this. Theres useful information there for students, journalism educators, reporters and […]
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This is good advice to reporters and editors: “If you can’t write a good headline, maybe you should work a bit more to get to the point of the story.”
And this from David Johnson is excellent: “editors are curators and gardeners of ongoing subjects, they don’t just move products down an assembly line anymore. they play in a live band.”
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[…] Steve Buttry does community engagement and social media, and he’s got some insight on this subject: All newsroom jobs are changing. That includes copy editors and it should. […]
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[…] part I waited because I was finishing timely posts on copy editing and student media and doing some other work, but I could have set things aside to weigh in on the […]
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[…] some mainstream media journalists out there who don’t see the value of social media, but Steve Buttry of Digital First Media is not one of […]
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[…] Copy editing: It’s taught me a lot, but it has to change Over in the US, Steve Buttry has some advice for copy editors seeking to contribute to Digital First newsrooms and some copy editing tips for all journalists. […]
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Yes, I know it’s very different here in the UK!
For a couple of years I was the features editor of a west London evening paper (sadly no longer with us). Part of my job was to put together a weekly tabloid pull-out called Motor Mail. To give it a bit of a lift, I asked one of our reporters (female, as it happens) to “road” test a tractor.
My headline: When I plough, they scatter.
Another road tested a London bus (the iconic red ones with two floors).
On a different topic, I regret that very few newspapers and agencies now have copytakers (that is, a team which takes dictation from reporters in the field).
Reporters are now required to file from their laptops.
In this country, trainees are required to gain a certificate from the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ). Believe me, it’s tough.
Trainees need shorthand at 100wpm — but there’s no test for typing.
Many use just two fingers.
With a copytaking system and when I was the news editor, the call was transferred to me along with the copy so that I could clear up omissions/errors/misunderstandings etc., straight away.
Important when we had three daily editions (9am, 10am and 11am).
But then those days are now behind me!
Paul Liptrot
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This is Ignasi Meda-Calvet, from Barcelona (Spain). I am writing an article to get it published by Cogent Arts & Humanities, a fully peer-reviewed, open access, international scholarly journal (see the following link):
http://cogentoa.tandfonline.com/journal/oaah20
The question is that I would like to use two images in my article, which they appeared first in The Home Computing Weekly magazine, back in the mid-eighties. Given that your name appears as one of the editors in this magazine, do you know whom should I ask in order to get the rights or permission to publish the images within an academic article?
Thanks for your help.
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[…] Steve Buttry of Digital First Media makes some very good points in his recent blog post about copy-editors. […]
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“Don’t protect the past. Defensiveness is part of the copy desk culture. You are the newsroom’s last line of defense against errors. You uphold standards. You will have valid questions about the changes your newsroom is undertaking. You can and should engage in the discussion about the changes. But focus your contributions on solutions, not on defending a past that, however much we loved it, isn’t returning.”
Some of us are ready to change, but our papers aren’t. We can’t save our jobs if our newsrooms won’t let us. In my experience — which, admittedly, is limited — it’s a generational thing; many of those who cling to the past have spent decades in the business, and those of us who push for our jobs to evolve are often younger, less married to “the way we’ve always done it,” and better able to adapt to the changes. And, because we grew up in the digital age, we’ve known for years how necessary these changes are. We just can’t convince everyone else. I’ve seen so many young people leave newsrooms because of this, and while I’m still at my desk, I can’t help but wonder how much longer I’ll be able to stay in journalism. It’s heartbreaking.
I love copy editing, but the longer it takes the newsroom to change, the more I realize I can’t depend on my job being here in a few years. Unfortunately, more papers are cutting copy editors instead of changing the job description, and the products, both print and digital, suffer for it. And, along the way, we lose the people who could truly help us change for the better.
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Thanks for your comment. I can’t and won’t deny the generational trends you describe. But I must say that I am encouraged be the leadership some of my peers (I’m 57) have shown in leading change on copy desks and in newsrooms. And I have been repeatedly amazed at the resistance to change I have encountered from younger journalists (even journalism students).
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I was one the of the anti-change students in j-school. I was young(er), an idealist and a purist, convinced that if we let go of our traditional role, we’d never get it back. Now, not even five years later, I’m practically begging for the copy editor’s job description to expand so that we can evolve along with our products.
While I can’t say I’m completely sold on the idea of a Digital First newsroom — especially the move to have non-copy editors copy edit; I’ve worked in a few newsrooms that have switched to this type of model, and it has, thus far, always resulted in a serious decline in copy quality — I’m encouraged to see that copy editors are still around and are being encouraged to innovate. At this point, that might be the best we can hope for.
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I would love to be a copy editor one day.
Thanks for this column!
PS. Does anyone know a good school to learn about this?
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I think and hope that every good J-school teaches copy editing. I wouldn’t pretend that I am expert enough to say who does the best job of teaching copy editing.
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[…] far the most popular post of the month was my advice to copy editors and to journalists who need to take more responsibility for their own work. Posts with advice for journalists have always been some of my most popular content. I don’t […]
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Good tips! I’m going to be a copy editor for my college paper in the fall
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Just finished this and, as a copy editor for 17 years, agree entirely with you Steve on the many points you have raised. I hope publishers don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater on this issue, as has been happening in too many newsrooms.
I think the punny-ness in headlines in recent years seemed almost a necessity when two- or three-word “hammer” headlines became a too-common design tool. Perhaps our own desire to be clever — to show off — also reflects the virtual invisibility of the profession to others. The only time copy editors ever get into trouble is when mistakes slip past them. They seldom win praise for all the saves they make each day.
For my part, I had two pun headlines of which I was proud (I’ve repressed the abysmal failures, or the ones I thought were clever that no one else actually got):
In Cheyenne, Wyoming, “Dead ringers” (2 deks @ 60 pt FGC) on a story about a backhoe operator who hit a phone line junction box and knocked out service to thousands of people. My ME at the time said this was the first time she had ever been swamped with calls from readers who actually complimented a headline.
In Elgin, a story about a police chase that ended in a Little League field and included a photo that verified the accuracy of the headline: “Police shag suspect after short drive into left field.”
But opportunities where puns work well are rare.
One other point: You mentioned the importance of clarity. One of my mentors, a guy named Marty O’Mara, used to quote one of his mentors about one of his fundamental rules of copy editing that sometimes can trump even grammar or style: Clarity is essential. I’m grateful Marty shared that, among many other things over our years working together in Elgin.
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Thanks, Ted. I love a clever, clear headline. And if you can write one with the right search keywords, you have headline gold: something the search engines will find and then the searcher will click on.
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In the SEO age, if a pun is two or three words, I think it can precede an informative hed, as in “Dead ringers: Backhoe kills phone service to thousands.” Usually the deck has the informative part.
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[…] Copy editing: It’s taught me a lot, but it has to change (stevebuttry.wordpress.com) […]
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[…] instance, my best-read May post, about copy editing, has had 5,623 total views: 5,163 on-site and 460 by syndication. This was a fairly typical pattern […]
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Interesting read, I learn some good facts. I agree with the whole speed thing, doing it slowly sure is more thorough but in the long run it’s not worth being so slow! Thanks for the post 🙂
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I understand this comment is over a year after your original post. In my university’s Professional Writing course, we were assigned to read this and share our thoughts. Since I have just created a blog to keep up with the information age, I figured I’d comment. Thank you! You have made a new follower today (though, you really don’t need any help in that department!).
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Thanks! I’m glad you (and your professor) found it helpful.
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I understand to be more efficient you need to work fast and focus on your main job. When the article states to not worry about mistakes the editor should have caught I don’t agree. A mistake is a mistake and if it was missed once and caught the next time around it should be fixed.
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Also I agree with having your own blog to help improve your skills and writing. I have my own personal blog outside of classes that has helped my writing tremendously
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[…] Copy editing: It’s taught me a lot, but it has to change […]
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I keep hearing that search engine optimisation is dead, what
is your opinion over the way forward for search engine optimisation?
Bookmarked your website, should help me keep up to date with regular posts
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I think social media has passed up search in importance now, but I don’t regard that as a permanent development. I still search multiple times a day, and I think helping people find your content will remain important for the foreseeable future.
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