Sub-editing is growing in importance, even while subs are losing their jobs

Good article by Roy Greenslade in Media Guardian today:

Subeditors: another attempt to explain why they are becoming redundant. 

Media stories used to be a patchwork, with journalists assembling their stories from a variety of PR sources.

Nowadays, as more journalism goes online, we find that a lot of our work ends up exactly as we wrote it.  Frequently, publications will use our stories almost in full, uncut.  That’s flattering, and I sometimes feel like a ‘surrogate journalist’. 

However, the upshot is that sub-editing isn’t only important for newspapers and magazines.  It’s a vital skill for us too.

Here at ‘Colby Towers’ we run our copy past several pairs of eyes.  Whichever one of us has prepared it, at least one other person (usually two) must sub-edit it carefully even before we get the client’s input.  And then, when it’s ‘signed-off’, we read it all over again just to be sure.   This is time-consuming, but we think it’s essential.

I once attended a two-day sub-editing seminar hosted by veteran Fleet Street journalist Ron Hack (real name).  He began the course by asking us what we thought the difference was between an editor and a sub-editor. 

My own instant reply was "An editor takes care of the stories, while a sub-editor looks after the words."

He fed my pride by saying he’d never heard a better definition.  I’ve not heard a better one since, either.

(NB: The one exception to our ‘two or three sub-editors’ rule is this blog.  It’s the authentic, individual, unedited voice of the writer.)