Thats what copy editors are for.
Thats why we have copy editors.
Ive gotten those comments recently from two reporters while discussing errors or unclear prose the first from a beginner; the latter, from a veteran journalist who knew he had spelled a name two ways in his story but figured copy editors would catch the mistake. (They didnt..)
Such comments as well as those from readers who frequently ask, Whos reading behind your reporters? or Where are your proofreaders? convinced me that a column on copy editing might help readers better understand our news-production process.
The Virginian-Pilot has copy desks, or teams, as we classify them. Theres the main, nightside staff: team leader Karron Skog, layout team leader Bernadette Kinlaw and 12 full-time editors. About four part-timers also work here. Don Naden, a 20-year Pilot veteran, has headed the day-desk team for the past seven years. He and five editors handle copy mainly for The Daily Break, Flavor and Sundays Gracious Living sections and the Carolina Coast tabloid.
Sports handles its own copy, including copy editing and layout. The editorial board edits its own copy.
The copy desk has often been described as the last line of defense for accuracy. The best writers make mistakes, and its our job to catch them, said Naden.
Skog explains:
We look for errors of fact, spelling, grammar and punctuation. But we also edit stories for clarity, using the rule of thumb that if we dont understand something, the reader probably wont either. Were always on the lookout for words and phrases that could be libelous. We strive to make things simple, using shorter words in place of multisyllabic ones and sorting out the doublespeak.
And we edit for taste, taking out phrases that are inappropriate for news pages, depending on the tone of the story, Skog said.
For example, poop has been changed to hog waste in a serious story about water contamination, but poop remained in a story about a Chesapeake poop patrol that was causing a bichon trouble, notes The Role of the Copy Desk memorandum posted on the newsrooms electronic bulletin board.
The document notes, too, that columnists have tons more leeway than news reporters do. They can say things that would not show up in news stories.
Reporters frequently get blamed unfairly for inaccurate or questionable headlines. Reporters occasionally suggest headlines, but copy editors write them.
Skog explained that whats known as the rim editor first reads a story, writes the headlines, photo captions and other display elements as determined by a page designer. The rim editor then sends the material to a slot editor, who checks the work and may suggest changes in editing or headlines. Once the stories are through the copy desk, the pages are proofread by the news editor and the metro editor.
Copy editors, Naden said, must read copy on two levels: first, to understand the storys overall meaning and logic and to notice the discrepancies in detail that signal less-obvious errors; second, to catch the typos, misspellings, grammar and punctuation errors and other shortcomings that keep a good story from being a really good or great story.
Reporters and editors are required to put cq next to names and other basic facts to indicate they have verified the correctness of the information. But its not a fail-safe system.
Indeed, copy editors frequently discover cqed information thats incorrect: Jodi Foster instead of Jodie Foster. The Berkeley section of Norfolk instead of Berkley. Bousch Street instead of Boush Street. Even a familiar name like Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf has been misspelled.
Collectively, copy editors possess a smorgasbord of knowledge that helps them improve our pages. They also have institutional memory about the area.
Still, Naden noted that copy editors occasionally make mistakes themselves. We might not notice an error or we might spell a word incorrectly in, say, a headline or caption. The worst mistake we can make is introducing an error into a story at the point where were trying to improve it. That doesnt happen often, but when it does, we take it personally, beat ourselves up over it.
Clearly, copy editors are invaluable. Were it not for our copy editors, our Corrections column would run on and on and on.
The difficult part of our job is that our successes are at times because of other peoples failures, said Skog. But copy editors dont toot their own horns, she added, because that might embarrass someone.
She might have added that copy editing is, to a certain extent, a thankless job. Reporters dont often thank them for catching their mistakes. And reader praise or ire is directed at the reporter whose byline is on the story.
