A call for citizen copy editors
The Northwestern needs you.
Someone has posted a comment on the Northwestern's lead story about a cily error in the headline that goes across the top of the page.
Hey, look, we all make mysteaks.
There's something called "Pulaski's Law": It's trying to do too much.
I think that's what Gannett is asking its employees to do, and sooner or later the strains are going to show.
And it's not that Gannett isn't earning money hand over fist or that it doesn't have money to invest in the important things, like executive bonuses.
posted by Miles Maguire at 7:25 AM
3 Comments:
The Northwestern's typos and other errors would be comical if it hadn't "progressed" to being damaging at times. I recently wrote an op-ed for the Northwestern and while I'm grateful for being given the opportunity and space, I'm alarmed by their copy editors work. Despite speaking at great length with the paper regarding content, someone added an archaic and disturbingly incorrect term regarding gender variance. While I wasn't surprised by this, I was disheartened that they made it look like I would use the term.
The organization I volunteer with has been approached by a NW reporter about running another story. While getting our information out is helpful for the group, we are hesitant because we know that, somehow, they will probably print incorrect info.
It's Gannett's smaller papers that are floundering under the perpetual do-more-with-less directives. Newspapers always will have typos — it's the nature of the beast — but The Northwestern is atrocious.
You can't post daily photo galleries (new "Public Enemies" shots every single day...really?), dabble with online video and still expect to have time left over to do proper proofing.
And, of course, the growing number of typos is a harbinger of greater errors to come.
Good thing they can always print a correction in tomorrow's edition.
I applied at the Northwestern recently for a copy editor position, and during the course of the interview found out that the copy desk would be responsible for not only the Northwestern, but also the Fond du Lac Reporter and a paper in Sheboygan. There consolidation of three media outlets in itself was disturbing, but one can easily see the problem of error correction gets compounded by such a work load.
I imagine that this reorganizing will cut even more expenses and make the salary raises to those in power seem justified to their overseers. 1984's Ministry of Information seems well on its way as media control is centralized in a few areas, and content can be changed electronically with little to no paper trail.
Conversations that I've had with several of their staff indicate a change towards rating their successfulness based on web hits, and thus photo galleries that people are interested in are favored over reporting of actual issues.
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