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As newspapers continue their drive to slash costs and streamline processes, there has been a marked trend towards getting rid of sub-editors and making the journalists sub their own copy and upload it into the content management system.
A number of high-profile journalists and media commentators, such as Jeff Jarvis, have insisted this is the way to go and that editors will be given a new role as a "gentle coach".
So what really happens when sub-editors get made redundant and the hacks are left to their own devices? The Sunday Express found out recently to its cost that it was a false economy.
The memo leaked to Media Guardian sent by a senior staffer at the paper to the journalists there revealed what a disaster the decision to fire 80 sub-editors has been. And more are apparently to be laid off shortly!
I have to admit I practically wept with laughter when I read the memo yesterday. It more than backs up my assertion that subs do much more than cut copy to fit. The list of howlers, gaffes, basic spelling errors and potential legal problems arising from the daft decision to make the hacks edit their own work just proves that sub-editors are the oil that keeps the cogs running smoothly at a newspaper.
I don't have much time for the Express, but I find it depressing that any company would be prepared to publish anything so error-strewn, just to save a few quid, and trash its reputation into the bargain. If I were an Express reader, the poor quality of its copy would have me switching allegiance to another paper.
If anything, the experience at the Sunday Express should be sufficient to convince all newspapers that cutting back on sub-editors is a stupid idea. Sure, these are difficult times for the media, especially as we enter a recession and advertising revenue, which funds the press, is reduced.
I'll be interested to see whether the media commentators still think subs are an unnecessary luxury...
Showing posts with label sub-editors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sub-editors. Show all posts
11 October 2008
18 August 2008
A luxury? Sub-editors revisited
Over the last few months, media commentators have been engaged in a debate over the future of sub-editors. Jeff Jarvis blogged today in the Guardian that subs are a luxury. But are they? I've posted before on what sub-editors do, so let's look again at what's going on...
A small number of UK newspapers have already dumped their subs completely, not just for online but also print editions too. Newspaper proprietors are largely only concerned with the bottom line so if they can get their product out there for less, they will. Subs do not just clean up typos and dodgy punctuation or cut copy to fit. They also need an excellent working knowledge of media law, which is ever-changing, in order to prevent all kinds of legal howlers that could see a paper being sued. Papers that think they can cut corners by axing subs could be leaving themselves wide open to all kinds of problems.
The downside is that journalists themselves are being asked to sub their own copy. Quite apart from the problems arising when you try to edit your own work, many journalists do not write great English (and rely on the subs desk to do rewrites) and most do not have the comprehensive understanding of media law that subs do, but have only a limited working knowledge of libel law. Beyond that, staff journalists for some years now have been working longer hours in expanded roles (but not for more money, let's not forget that). Now, suddenly, they are being asked to take on the sub-editing that would previously have been someone else's exclusive task.
Jarvis's comment today is the umpteenth run by the Guardian over the last 4 weeks or so. Press Gazette has also covered this thorny issue. I'd take issue with much of what Jarvis says, though. For one thing, blogging is most emphatically not journalism, although it may play a role within journalism and media law is equally applicable, and thus there will remain a need for subs who can edit out legal problems. Secondly, newspapers - at least in the UK - are unlikely to abandon print altogether in the next 10 or even 20 years (you can shoot me if that turns out to be wrong, but then you'd have to shoot a lot of other media commentators too). Thirdly, if a paper gets rid of its editor too, or even its section editors, who then decides on the stance of the paper, the angles it will cover news from, what areas of content it will carry? Who provide direction and guidance, not just to the readers but to the staff?
A freelance copy-editor colleague raised a question today about how Jarvis's vision might affect editors who take on web work. Personally, I don't think it is a major issue for copy-editors moving into web-editing. If they are sub-editing news sites, they should have a copy of McNae's on their desk - it's as essential as a dictionary or any other standard reference work in use by editors. If they are editing for corporates, it's unlikely such clients will choose to cut back on editing when their website and other corporate literature represent their public face and brand and need to maintain a high level of quality.
Is Jarvis right? Or is he misguided? Personally I think copy-editing or sub-editing is about much more than merely cutting copy to fit a CMS template and so I believe there will always be a place for a skilled and experienced editor who is capable of more than a simple tidy-up job.
What do you think?
Edited to add: Roy Greenslade has posted on this issue again this morning. Thanks, Roy.
A small number of UK newspapers have already dumped their subs completely, not just for online but also print editions too. Newspaper proprietors are largely only concerned with the bottom line so if they can get their product out there for less, they will. Subs do not just clean up typos and dodgy punctuation or cut copy to fit. They also need an excellent working knowledge of media law, which is ever-changing, in order to prevent all kinds of legal howlers that could see a paper being sued. Papers that think they can cut corners by axing subs could be leaving themselves wide open to all kinds of problems.
The downside is that journalists themselves are being asked to sub their own copy. Quite apart from the problems arising when you try to edit your own work, many journalists do not write great English (and rely on the subs desk to do rewrites) and most do not have the comprehensive understanding of media law that subs do, but have only a limited working knowledge of libel law. Beyond that, staff journalists for some years now have been working longer hours in expanded roles (but not for more money, let's not forget that). Now, suddenly, they are being asked to take on the sub-editing that would previously have been someone else's exclusive task.
Jarvis's comment today is the umpteenth run by the Guardian over the last 4 weeks or so. Press Gazette has also covered this thorny issue. I'd take issue with much of what Jarvis says, though. For one thing, blogging is most emphatically not journalism, although it may play a role within journalism and media law is equally applicable, and thus there will remain a need for subs who can edit out legal problems. Secondly, newspapers - at least in the UK - are unlikely to abandon print altogether in the next 10 or even 20 years (you can shoot me if that turns out to be wrong, but then you'd have to shoot a lot of other media commentators too). Thirdly, if a paper gets rid of its editor too, or even its section editors, who then decides on the stance of the paper, the angles it will cover news from, what areas of content it will carry? Who provide direction and guidance, not just to the readers but to the staff?
A freelance copy-editor colleague raised a question today about how Jarvis's vision might affect editors who take on web work. Personally, I don't think it is a major issue for copy-editors moving into web-editing. If they are sub-editing news sites, they should have a copy of McNae's on their desk - it's as essential as a dictionary or any other standard reference work in use by editors. If they are editing for corporates, it's unlikely such clients will choose to cut back on editing when their website and other corporate literature represent their public face and brand and need to maintain a high level of quality.
Is Jarvis right? Or is he misguided? Personally I think copy-editing or sub-editing is about much more than merely cutting copy to fit a CMS template and so I believe there will always be a place for a skilled and experienced editor who is capable of more than a simple tidy-up job.
What do you think?
Edited to add: Roy Greenslade has posted on this issue again this morning. Thanks, Roy.
24 July 2008
Food for thought
Restaurant critic Giles Coren is the target of much amusement in the hackosphere today. He had the temerity to fire off an abusive email to the subs desk at The Times because one of them cut a one-letter word from one of his reviews.
Giles, Giles, did no one ever tell you that having a go at the subs desk is akin to a waiter pissing in your soup after you told them it was too cold?
Most sub-editors work incredibly hard under appalling pressure to get stuff ready for publication on time. It's a thankless task and not that well paid for the most part. I have written at length about what subs do.
Coren has basically thrown all his toys out of the pram for the sake of an indefinite article, while managing to be abusive, pompous and childish. As a fellow hack pointed out, if half the subs involved didn't get the alleged joke that was "ruined", it's unlikely most of the readers would, too. It wasn't even that funny a joke, anyway, so it not going into print is no great loss.
Most journalists would greatly improve their writing skills by doing a spell on the subs desk. I spent nearly 4 years subbing in London and it made a huge difference to the quality of my writing, as well as giving me enormous insight into how much and how often the subs save the bacon of many a reputation when it comes to fact-checking and flagging up potential legal issues.
Coren is undoubtedly going to get much flak from the Times' subs in future, especially whichever poor sod is on shift when he files his copy. Let's hope they call him up to discuss every single copy change required. One by one.
And with any luck, it'll make any other celebrity writers think twice about being abusive to the skilled subs who polish their turds.
Late PM edit: Coren has been the talk of everywhere today. Someone claiming to be Giles Coren even popped up on Twitter railing against any other hack who dared to comment on his sweary tantrum (although sadly not me). Other journos dug up his winning entry for the 2005 Bad Sex in Fiction Award, to add to the embarrassment. All very distracting. It's amazing I got any work done, what with Coren, Max Mosley winning his case against the News of the World and the Facebook libel case...
Giles, Giles, did no one ever tell you that having a go at the subs desk is akin to a waiter pissing in your soup after you told them it was too cold?
Most sub-editors work incredibly hard under appalling pressure to get stuff ready for publication on time. It's a thankless task and not that well paid for the most part. I have written at length about what subs do.
Coren has basically thrown all his toys out of the pram for the sake of an indefinite article, while managing to be abusive, pompous and childish. As a fellow hack pointed out, if half the subs involved didn't get the alleged joke that was "ruined", it's unlikely most of the readers would, too. It wasn't even that funny a joke, anyway, so it not going into print is no great loss.
Most journalists would greatly improve their writing skills by doing a spell on the subs desk. I spent nearly 4 years subbing in London and it made a huge difference to the quality of my writing, as well as giving me enormous insight into how much and how often the subs save the bacon of many a reputation when it comes to fact-checking and flagging up potential legal issues.
Coren is undoubtedly going to get much flak from the Times' subs in future, especially whichever poor sod is on shift when he files his copy. Let's hope they call him up to discuss every single copy change required. One by one.
And with any luck, it'll make any other celebrity writers think twice about being abusive to the skilled subs who polish their turds.
Late PM edit: Coren has been the talk of everywhere today. Someone claiming to be Giles Coren even popped up on Twitter railing against any other hack who dared to comment on his sweary tantrum (although sadly not me). Other journos dug up his winning entry for the 2005 Bad Sex in Fiction Award, to add to the embarrassment. All very distracting. It's amazing I got any work done, what with Coren, Max Mosley winning his case against the News of the World and the Facebook libel case...
29 April 2008
In praise of subs
The boffins at the University of Manchester have being doing some research into page architecture. Put in simple English, that means they have been analysing page layouts for newspapers. Despite the somewhat negative headline, it's actually a huge thumbs-up for the unsung heroes of the press - the hardworking sub-editors.
The subs' desk is basically where a paper or magazine is put together. All the copy for publication passes through here before the presses roll. The subs don't just clean up journalists' typos, grammar and punctuation. Oh no. The list of tasks is massive:
Page layout is something subs have been doing for years. I used to be a layout sub myself back in the late 80s and early 90s, firstly paper mock-ups then later on-screen in Quark Xpress. There's a certain skill to it, which can be picked up fairly quickly, but you'll never make a good layout sub if you can't do all the other bits of the job. True, the pages are first laid out in templates by the page designers, but the subs themselves will create the live article pages within the confines of the template. It's good to see that recognised.
The other reason that subs are unsung heroes is this - when a sub does their job well, it goes unnoticed. But you can bet the journalist with the byline will be the one to pick up the praise: "Loved your article on tractor mechanics in Albania, fascinating!" Unbeknown to the reader, the article is only fabulous because the sub-editor rewrote the crap copy filed by the hack, which was far too long, had numerous errors and was generally unreadable before being polished for publication. I've lost count of the number of times I've saved some hack's reputation. Naturally, my own copy is always damn near perfect when I file, because I've seen it from both sides. And the proof is the comments I get back thanking me for work that needed very little subbing.
The downside is when a sub fucks up. It happens. Like the time I subbed a 2,000-word feature and wrote all the captions for the pics then was told to cut 500 words as a half-page had been sold to an advertiser. I duly slashed the copy, failing to notice that I'd axed a critical comment I'd pulled out to use as a caption. Needless to say, the company featured in the article was furious, my boss saw red and I got an almighty bollocking, but (fortunately) not the sack. But we won't talk about the downsides...
The subs' desk is basically where a paper or magazine is put together. All the copy for publication passes through here before the presses roll. The subs don't just clean up journalists' typos, grammar and punctuation. Oh no. The list of tasks is massive:
- correcting typos, grammar and punctuation
- fact-checking
- spellchecking place names, foreign words and people
- putting copy into house style
- flagging up copy that might be defamatory or otherwise legally dubious
- rewriting
- cutting copy to fit the page (or, conversely, lengthening it if needs be)
- writing headlines, picture captions and sells/standfirsts (the big paragraph under the title that persuades you to read the article)
- laying out the pages
Page layout is something subs have been doing for years. I used to be a layout sub myself back in the late 80s and early 90s, firstly paper mock-ups then later on-screen in Quark Xpress. There's a certain skill to it, which can be picked up fairly quickly, but you'll never make a good layout sub if you can't do all the other bits of the job. True, the pages are first laid out in templates by the page designers, but the subs themselves will create the live article pages within the confines of the template. It's good to see that recognised.
The other reason that subs are unsung heroes is this - when a sub does their job well, it goes unnoticed. But you can bet the journalist with the byline will be the one to pick up the praise: "Loved your article on tractor mechanics in Albania, fascinating!" Unbeknown to the reader, the article is only fabulous because the sub-editor rewrote the crap copy filed by the hack, which was far too long, had numerous errors and was generally unreadable before being polished for publication. I've lost count of the number of times I've saved some hack's reputation. Naturally, my own copy is always damn near perfect when I file, because I've seen it from both sides. And the proof is the comments I get back thanking me for work that needed very little subbing.
The downside is when a sub fucks up. It happens. Like the time I subbed a 2,000-word feature and wrote all the captions for the pics then was told to cut 500 words as a half-page had been sold to an advertiser. I duly slashed the copy, failing to notice that I'd axed a critical comment I'd pulled out to use as a caption. Needless to say, the company featured in the article was furious, my boss saw red and I got an almighty bollocking, but (fortunately) not the sack. But we won't talk about the downsides...
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