Monday, December 07, 2009

Copy Editing: It Works

Here at SPOGG, we love a good editor--so much so that the bad editors in our past, including the one who changed a woman's name from "Wanda" to "Panda" in a news story, are forgiven.

Lately, copy editors have on occasion been deemed not central to the core business of journalism. This is patently untrue, even if it's not particularly surprising given the myopic, conservative, often clubby way the newspaper business is run.

Hence, we particularly enjoy this bit from the blog of John McIntyre, formerly of the Baltimore Sun:

Save money: Cut back on editing

A correction from The Washington Post:

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

Read the rest. It gets better from here.

2 comments:

Barry Leiba said...

«the lobby is busy with clean-looking families who are up and Adam»

I was trying to sort out who Adam was, until I went to the original NYT article and read the 'graph there:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/fashion/03JANZEN.html?pagewanted=all
For some reason, the full context was what I needed to figure out the error.

The lobby's being busy reminds me of a business memo sent out some years ago by an executive at my company. The memo contained a typo for "busy" that included a spurious "t".

Martha Brockenbrough said...

I wish I could be so busy, Barry.