Copy desk's worth invaluable, but hard to measure
By Doug Fisher
What is your copy desk worth?
Not what it costs you. That's in your operating statements. But do you
know what it's worth?
Managers and copy editors are guaranteed to struggle with that question
during the next decade as cost and profit pressures increase.
Copy editors are passionate about the issue, raising the "last line
of defense" flag. They point to very public cases, from the Janet
Cooke fiasco to a small Tennessee newspaper, where that last line failed.
And they take pride in the daily dozens of unheralded cases where an eagle-eyed
editor prevented a correction or maybe a canceled subscription.
But managers can be understood if they see a cost center. How do you
prove a negative? How do you value preventing another trip to the lawyer's
office – or worse, to the bank?
The New York Times, reporting on the demise of Knight Ridder, noted that
during the final scramble the company considered consolidating its copy
desks. Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of Britain's Telegraph Group,
wrote that "integration of print and on-line inevitably provides
considerable scope for reducing duplication of effort and for simplifying
the editorial production process."
Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade concluded it meant "waving farewell
to sub-editors." Instead, all journalists will need the skills of
untangling tortured prose, spelling and fact-checking, he wrote. After
all, bloggers post lots of readable copy "without the need for anyone
to write a snappy headline or insert a semi-colon." And it's cheap.
He who has himself as an editor has a fool for one, retort the copy editors.
And in a day when information is a commodity and the need for distinguishing
content is critical to success, why do you want your reporters editing
when they should be reporting?
About three years ago, Gannett consolidated some of its Wisconsin desks.
It's been done in a few other places, too, with the predictable
complaints that local copy sometimes is mishandled. But expect to see
more of it.
In 2002, three researchers said editing was undervalued in journalism
schools. They, in turn, cited a 1983 report calling editing one of the
toughest courses to teach because of the lack of respect.
In 1998, one of the three, John Russial, a former Philadelphia copy editor,
had argued that copy editing is more than chasing type lice, and if no
one has time for the larger issues such as fairness and structure, "then
value will be lost." But Russial, in looking at how editors were
being dispersed from the desk to newsroom teams, didn't quantify that
value.
With the Internet, those taking aim now have bigger guns and more ammunition.
For one thing, the speed at which language changes is raising good questions
about the role of copy editing and about maintaining those shibboleths
long held dear on the desk. Philip Meyer, in "The Vanishing Newspaper," said
his studies suggest that good copy editing does not translate into higher
readership.
But lest copy editors cry "Woe is us," they need to check reality,
too – reality that in a struggling industry, changes will happen.
Among those are likely to be a greater use of part-timers and contract
editors to match staffing to workflow. Copy desks, much like utilities,
need to be staffed for peak times, but the inevitable financial pressures
will make managers look at ways to control costs otherwise (after all,
those part-time hires often get reduced benefits). And yes, there probably
will be outsourcing of some more routine duties.
Wringing their hands won't help. Copy editors, never an easy bunch to
corral, will have to figure out how to quantify their value – and
then how to work together to effectively tell their story. The American
Copy Editors Society has helped, but there is more to be done.
One way might be to pull out a copy of that Tennessee paper I mentioned
earlier. It paid $978,721 to a high school soccer player and his coach
for a "joke" quote left in a story. Fifty words that appropriate
copy editing could have caught.
What is copy editing worth? About $19,574 per word.
