Andrew Beaujon
July 25, 2012
3:40 pm
BBC News
Worrying about
robot writers is so three months ago; the next threat to journalists' paychecks is robot editors.
Wikipedia couldn't exist without them, BBC News' Daniel Nasaw reports. ClueBot NG prowls the massive site looking for vandalism, like a line about the human penis in an article about courts. "It is one of several hundred bots patrolling Wikipedia at any given time," Nasaw writes.
"Wikipedia would be a shambles without bots," a Wikipedia administrator known on the site as Hersfold writes in an email. ...
They delete vandalism and foul language, organise and catalogue entries, and handle the reams of behind-the-scenes work that keep the encyclopaedia running smoothly and efficiently and keep its appearance neat and uniform in style.
Nasaw tells us not to worry, quoting programmer Brad Jorsch: "It takes human judgement to write an article or proof an article or even clean up grammar and spelling."
But robots
already write lots of articles, and you can purchase a
plugin for Word that checks your work against the AP Stylebook. If those robots start wearing cardigans and drinking herbal tea, copy editors will have
even more reasons to be nervous.
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Jeff Sonderman
May 30, 2012
10:25 am
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Craig Silverman
May 29, 2012
9:37 am
A day after its owner Postmedia announced layoffs that will target copy editors and cuts that will see some print editions reduced, Canada’s National Post today published a crossword that provides a reminder of the value of copy editing.
Canadian … Read more
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Craig Silverman
May 25, 2012
3:17 pm
Why do we need editors?
It’s a provocative question to pose publicly if you’re a journalist, and that’s exactly what GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram did today on Twitter:
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Steve Myers
May 25, 2012
12:51 pm
Earlier this week, Denver Post Editor Gregory Moore explained
how the newspaper plans to spread copy-editing duties throughout the newsroom after it eliminates the copy editing desk and reassigns the remaining editors to individual desks.
Under the old system, Moore said, a story often would be read six or seven times. Now it will be two or three, perhaps more if it’s a big, high-stakes story.
For this to work, staff will have to be trained on a variety of skills, such as writing headlines for print and the Web and, of course, copy editing.
The day before my story was published, this headline ran in the paper:
Related: John McIntyre says to
expect first drafts, quickly edited, after Denver Post eliminates copy desk
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Steve Myers
May 23, 2012
4:54 pm
The Baltimore Sun | Poynter | JimRomenesko.com
The Sun's John McIntyre writes that he is "deeply skeptical" that the Denver Post will be able to change its newsroom culture so that reporters and assigning editors can successfully take over copy editing.
The Post is eliminating its copy desk and spreading the remaining nine editors (from a copy desk of 23) throughout the newsroom.
Reporters tend not to be production-oriented. They want to report and write and take as much time as they can. ... Some reporters, as you can see from reading their blogs, cannot even be troubled to run spell-check before publishing.
What you can expect from the copy-editor-free newsroom is a first-draft text from a writer to which someone bearing the title of editor will have made a quick swipe before posting it online. You will notice the typos and lapses in grammar and usage, which stand out. What you may not be so quick to notice is that the reporting is often thin, superficial, uncritical, because no one was there to pose hard questions.
I think McIntyre has identified the problem correctly: It's a matter of culture, not skills. We'll have to see whether, as he predicts, the remaining copy editors — renamed "assistant editors" — will be too buried in their work to teach their colleagues how to write clean copy and clean others'. (Speaking of copy editing, John, it's Poynter.org, not Poynter.com, but I'll take referral traffic wherever I can get it!)
(more...)
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Steve Myers
May 23, 2012
6:51 am
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Mallary Jean Tenore
May 21, 2012
6:48 am
Warren Buffett, Michele Bachmann and Elliott Gould all have something in common: they know what it’s like to have journalists repeatedly misspell their names.
News organizations frequently run corrections for misspelled names, and some have misspelled the same name dozens … Read more
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Steve Myers
Apr. 26, 2012
2:55 pm
MediaWire memo
A memo from Contra Costa Times Executive Editor Dave Butler shows that another MediaNews paper is shifting copy-editing responsibilities within the newsroom. Thursday morning,
Westword published a memo from Denver Post Editor Gregory Moore saying copy-editing would be moved to the "content-generating level," with cuts to the copy-editing staff.
Now Butler tells his staff that senior editors have been discussing changes at the Contra Costa Times and with other Digital First Media newspapers. "Our idea, like Denver's, is to put more responsibility for copy editing on the editor doing the initial story read -- especially on routine stories," he writes. The changes will result in about 10 to 12 job cuts, he says. Here's how he describes the overall shift:
Those of you on our committees rethinking "digital first" are aware of many discussions about how to get copy editing done earlier in the process -- with the focus more on digital and less on the paper -- and more of a once-and-done approach to stories, rather than writing and editing several versions. Similar efforts are going on across the company -- especially at larger papers, where more traditional copy desks continue to operate. A second or third edit on most stories has become a luxury most newspapers no longer can afford.
The San Jose Mercury News and The Oakland Tribune,
among others, also are part of Bay Area News Group.
Earlier: Denver Post to lay off copy editors, shift copy-editing to ‘content-generating level’ ||
Related: Brady says centralized production of national, international news key to Journal Register’s future (more...)
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