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.
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
Filed under: Digital First journalism Tagged: Contra Costa Times, copy editing, Denver Post, Digital First journalism 
