A decade ago I refereed a debate about the merits of copy editors on the 6th floor of a metro newspaper editing copy created by writers on the 8th floor of the same metro.
Granted, they were in different departments, and didn’t have the same background as their same-floor copy editors. But this big step would only be taken in an emergency, or in a copy crunch.
Great discussion by talented people, and a solution was reached that worked for all. The integrity of content was preserved. The expertise of talented copy editors was kept in play, and quality editing survived.
Some of those editors, but not many, are still in the business today, paying attention to words that matter and making sure every i is dotted and every t crossed. And every fact checked. And every addition error caught. And every slanderous statement eradicated.
It’s been a tough decade for the industry, but the true, career copy editor has felt as much or more pain as any editorial employee. Fewer editors, earlier deadlines so circulation can run longer routes – but then again, fewer stories to edit and fewer writers to correct.
The editor – copy editor, news editor, city editor – is the unheralded soul of a paper. They are nameless – to the public, anyway – experts. They are cherished by reporters who understand their role; they are dismissed by writers who want to take a shortcut, and get short-circuited by a good editor.
In that same 6th floor newsroom many years earlier I heard my city editor issue this plaintive wail: “Reetz, come up here and tell me why we ought to run this piece of s— in our newspaper.”
And I did, and we did.
Mellow, a few days later, he said, “don’t use the big words, write like people talk. Well, like smart people talk; not dumb people. It’s the best advice I can give you.”
Now, as papers seek ways to survive, there is no limit to the creativity of an industry trying to survive.
To one extreme, some papers outsource copy editing overseas, but there’s obviously quite a language gap in dealing with nuances of writing. More commonly, other papers outsource copy editing to other papers in their corporate chain. More are outsourcing page design to their corporate newspaper partners.
A newspaper hundreds of miles away from its sister paper may be designing and laying out the pages, paginating them, and sending to a printing plant at a third sister paper. Then, after making the digital route, they get trucked back for home delivery, all in a few hours between midnight and dawn.
Now, we get to the heart of it all, and the chance for economies, and ability to trim expenses and survive: centralized printing locations and centralized data center operations.
Centralized printing is such a no-brainer. Anybody who owned a weekly in the good old days used a job printer somewhere; USA Today, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have been using distributed press operations for decades.
Centralized data center operations finally started popping up in the newspaper industry a decade or so ago, usually to handle something “neutral” like business or circulation systems. But now they are proliferating, providing homes for editorial systems and web content management systems, all under one corporate roof.
And the vendors stand ready to take the next giant leap.
There was a time when a massive IT department with hundreds of employees was a sign of success. No more, especially on the web side of newspapers. Success can be driven by smaller numbers, with tight and integrated vendor relationships, all built around the cloud.
Cloud computing is amazingly simple, and has been around a long time, but just now moving into the newspaper industry as these financial times force innovation.
From a web perspective, it’s as basic as working with a top-notch vendor, who provides not only the software, but the software updates. Plus the data center, and the hosting. Plus the redundancy. Plus the bandwidth. Plus the help desk. Support desk. Development team. And whatever other services they want to add on, and you want to purchase.
It’s not for everyone, and if you have a challenging time with your supplier, you do have the issue of a lot of eggs in one basket. But it’d be the same if you were running it yourself. Not everything goes perfectly, even if you “think” you have “full control” internally.
If you’re interested in ways the industry is looking to survive, jump into the cloud, and read Ellie Behling’s analysis at emediavitals.com. She covers more bases with more depth and detail than I have done in this column.
Why do I care about cloud computing?
Maybe it will save a copy editor’s job, and the paper’s accuracy, all at the same time.