Again, I'm expressing my naivety about the different factors of a newspaper business, but today's lecture about outsourcing copy editors was interesting and something that I never considered possible.

The idea of outsourcing is not a new concept to me; half the calls I make to "Customer Service Lines" get directed to someone overseas. Once, I even had a five-minute discussion with someone from the Philippines, who asked me where my parents were from and forgot about helping me with my Mac. Come to think of it, I don't even know who she figured out I was Filipino over the phone.

Anyway, outsourcing those types of jobs make sense; businesses that distribute their products throughout the country and nation-wide don't need to keep their jobs within the country, necessarily.

However, I feel that the newspaper industry should not jump on the bandwagon and outsource jobs. A newspaper, for the most part, is not a product that that is distributed throughout the country and read by millions of people (unless it's the New York Times, etc.). And, unlike a book – which someone brought up in class to compare to newspapers – newspapers are filled with content about the local community and read by that same target audience. I feel that it ruins the quality of a newspaper somewhat if someone from outside of that area edits content about places and events that they might never have even heard. It would be tough enough for a copy editor from the News-Gazette in Champaign-Urbana, for example, to edit copy for a newspaper in Kissimmee, Florida. The further the job gets outsourced, the harder it will become.

I think the reason this was even considered a possibility is because some people may not consider how important the job of a copy-editor is and how, just like reporters, it's necessary for a copy-editor to be familiar with the environment in which he or she works.

Roy Peter Clark acknowledged that copy-editors are usually the "last line of defense" and I don't understand why newspapers would want to risk that by outsourcing that "protection".

The Quality-Control Quandary

Before this semester, I never fully appreciated the role of a newspaper's copy editor. Sure, I've had my own fair share of editing a reporter's copy, fixing grammar and punctuation mistakes here and there, but that was about as far as my copy editing experience has taken me. As the semester winds down, however, I've realized that a copy editor's role is more important to a newspaper than I thought.

This article, "The Quality-Control Quandary," really brought to light how newspapers have been suffering because of the lack of copy editors in their newsrooms. The article questioned whether or not the credibility of newspapers' have gone down because of copy editor cutbacks and discussed how newsrooms are trying to adjust to the different forms of editing.

While some of these new forms of editing seem to work - newsrooms are compensating for their lack of copy editors by safeguarding the editorial process and requiring journalists to take more responsibility of their work - I have a problem with "back-editing" and "buddy editing." It's as if newsrooms are condoning publishing articles that may potentially have mistakes (grammar, punctuation and factual ones) because they can "just fix it later."

I understand that in this day and age, newsrooms are focusing on being the one to get the news out first. But, I'd rather risk being the last one to break the news instead of risking the possibility that my newsroom will gain a bad reputation for our poor editing and reporting skills.

It's sad that as the economy fails, newsrooms have to suffer with copy editor cutbacks. True, it's important to keep reporters, but it's also important to maintain credibility, and I believe copy editors are the right solution for that.