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Newspapers have been laying off copy editors right and left in recent years. A reduction in the quality and clarity of writing is an obvious and predictable out

Newspapers have been laying off copy editors right and left in recent years. A reduction in the quality and clarity of writing is an obvious and predictable outcome. https://j-source.ca/article/copy-editors-laid-off-more-than-other-newsroom-staffers-but-can-newspapers-credibility-afford-the-cut/ https://j-source.ca/article/copy-editors-laid-off-more-than-... https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2017/by-dismantling-its-copy-desk-the-new-york-times-is-making-a-mistake-thats-been-made-before/ https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2017/by-dismantlin...

AlexandrB 6y ago
It's sad to think that the lousy state of journalism in the 90s and early 2000s might have actually been a golden age.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Not only newspapers but even publishers of books. As a translator occasionally hired to translate works of literature, I do the best I can, but my manuscript still needs to go before a good proofreader and copyeditor to make everything just perfect before it is published. I have been dismayed at how now, publishers no longer use in-house staff but just hire an incompetent or lazy copywriter from the developing world off some freelancing platform. The same holds for typesetting. Sometimes the end result is worse than my original manuscript! Sadly, publishers 1) are competing with e.g. books self-published on Amazon, and 2) noticed that the mass market consuming those Amazon self-published efforts seems pretty OK with content that is full of typos and bad-quality typesetting, so why even bother any more?
- Zelphyr 6y ago
  A medical provider I know had a medical assistant that would write charts that were next to illegible. Little to no punctuation or capitalization. Slang. etc... The provider invariably had to go back and rewrite the charts because they didn't want that associated with their name. It's no wonder more and more people don't care about virtually unedited published content. In addition to not caring, often times they don't even know the difference. Which begs the question for me: what is it they say we're getting with all these standardized tests and the singular focus on teaching kids to pass those tests again? Because it seems to me we're about to have a populace doesn't read and can't write.
prepend 6y ago
It’s a vicious cycle with cost cutting removing these positions, leading to fewer people reading and relying on the paper, leading to more cost cutting. I also think that there’s fewer pedants complaining in letters to the editor about these kinds of errors. And probably fewer editors paid to read any letters. Finally, since any discussions I have with friends about the NYT turn into a tribal discussion, there’s a weird situation where people defend poor writing and editing because they are pro-NYT. So I tend to avoid, or at least not participate because they are so pointless and boring.
ycombinete 6y ago
My wife is an editor, and she’s finding more and more jobs titled things like “editor”, “editorial consultant”, “copy writer/editor”. Where the roles of editor and copywriter are conflated. So I think there’s a case as well where you have people who should be copy writers doing editing, as well as a dearth of copywriters.
benzible 6y ago
ding ding ding! Copy editors do far more than people assume [1]: > The dirty little secret of newspaper journalists is that a lot of them can't write very well. That's by no means universally true, but it's true enough. [...] I transformed some real trash into publishable writing, saved my paper and some writers from professional embarrassment, and introduced relatively few errors on my own. And from the comments: > Having worked at small, mid and metro newspapers, I can tell you reporters who can't write very well exist everywhere. When I first started working at a major metro, I thought all of the raw copy would be flawless. After all, these reporters were working at a metro daily. But there were plenty of reporters who really needed the old rewrite desk. Some reporters, of course, were very good writers But pity the poor reader if copy editors disappear. [1] http://www.yelvington.com/content/07-08-2008/death-copy-editing-or-death-specialization http://www.yelvington.com/content/07-08-2008/death-copy-edit...

AlexandrB 6y ago

It's sad to think that the lousy state of journalism in the 90s and early 2000s might have actually been a golden age.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

Not only newspapers but even publishers of books. As a translator occasionally hired to translate works of literature, I do the best I can, but my manuscript still needs to go before a good proofreader and copyeditor to make everything just perfect before it is published. I have been dismayed at how now, publishers no longer use in-house staff but just hire an incompetent or lazy copywriter from the developing world off some freelancing platform. The same holds for typesetting. Sometimes the end result is worse than my original manuscript! Sadly, publishers 1) are competing with e.g. books self-published on Amazon, and 2) noticed that the mass market consuming those Amazon self-published efforts seems pretty OK with content that is full of typos and bad-quality typesetting, so why even bother any more?

Zelphyr 6y ago
A medical provider I know had a medical assistant that would write charts that were next to illegible. Little to no punctuation or capitalization. Slang. etc... The provider invariably had to go back and rewrite the charts because they didn't want that associated with their name. It's no wonder more and more people don't care about virtually unedited published content. In addition to not caring, often times they don't even know the difference. Which begs the question for me: what is it they say we're getting with all these standardized tests and the singular focus on teaching kids to pass those tests again? Because it seems to me we're about to have a populace doesn't read and can't write.

prepend 6y ago

It’s a vicious cycle with cost cutting removing these positions, leading to fewer people reading and relying on the paper, leading to more cost cutting. I also think that there’s fewer pedants complaining in letters to the editor about these kinds of errors. And probably fewer editors paid to read any letters. Finally, since any discussions I have with friends about the NYT turn into a tribal discussion, there’s a weird situation where people defend poor writing and editing because they are pro-NYT. So I tend to avoid, or at least not participate because they are so pointless and boring.

ycombinete 6y ago

My wife is an editor, and she’s finding more and more jobs titled things like “editor”, “editorial consultant”, “copy writer/editor”. Where the roles of editor and copywriter are conflated. So I think there’s a case as well where you have people who should be copy writers doing editing, as well as a dearth of copywriters.

benzible 6y ago

ding ding ding! Copy editors do far more than people assume [1]: > The dirty little secret of newspaper journalists is that a lot of them can't write very well. That's by no means universally true, but it's true enough. [...] I transformed some real trash into publishable writing, saved my paper and some writers from professional embarrassment, and introduced relatively few errors on my own. And from the comments: > Having worked at small, mid and metro newspapers, I can tell you reporters who can't write very well exist everywhere. When I first started working at a major metro, I thought all of the raw copy would be flawless. After all, these reporters were working at a metro daily. But there were plenty of reporters who really needed the old rewrite desk. Some reporters, of course, were very good writers But pity the poor reader if copy editors disappear. [1] http://www.yelvington.com/content/07-08-2008/death-copy-editing-or-death-specialization http://www.yelvington.com/content/07-08-2008/death-copy-edit...