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.