New York Times 2020 Report

A new memo about changes in the NYT newsroom.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/business/new-york-times-newsroom-report-2020.html?_r=0

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The marketplace has spoken. The truth doesn't matter. All hail our glorious new reality.

 

McClatchy instituted a silly "2020" initiative 18 months ago. Guess the "2020" title makes these companies think they appear forward thinking. But they are always --- always --- two steps behind the curve.

To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, "If McClatchy owned a funeral parlor, no one would die."

 

In my shop, most stories still receive two reads, sometimes three. Headlines and cutlines are checked. And mistakes STILL get in. Eliminate one editing step from the process and errors are almost certain to increase proportionately.

Is it possible the New York Times' print edition soon will be edited by ... GateHouse?

 

There's no such thing as "duplicative" editing. Every set of eyes will catch something unique.

 

To reporters on that seven-person New York Times team, I'd tell the cautionary tale of the longtime sports columnist for my local paper. He's a strong writer and generally very good at his job. But one of his weaknesses is a tendency to make fact errors. The sports editor who hired him always absolved him of responsibility by saying it was "the copy desk's job to catch those mistakes." And far more often than not, the desk came through.

Fast-forward to now. Technically the paper still has a print desk, but it's a shell of what it used to be and focuses mainly on placing stories on pages and making deadlines. The sports columnist's copy isn't being edited much, if at all. And, to cite a few recent examples, doozies such as actor "Jonas Hill" and "the Bobcats' Kimba Walker" (two errors for the price of one there) make it into print. Readers call or email and point out the errors, but management no longer cares -- better to sacrifice credibility than to pay for a dedicated editing crew.

So, if you are a reporter who advocates downsizing or eliminating editing functions, you'd better (a) be so good that you don't need editing (and I've worked with a handful of reporters over the years who come close), or (b) be careful what you wish for.

 

Management memos, rotate at will:

a) "We still value our readers, of course, but we will cut back on the editing process to save time and money."

2) "Lately there have been a bunch of errors. You people had better BEAR DOWN and QUIT SLACKING OFF!"

 

Editing was more important when there was just the print edition, it was wrong it stayed wrong. Today, these news outlets hope nobody catches the mistakes, and if they do, they just fix them online. They know most people are not reading the print product.

I do give the Times credit for admitting mistakes in their online stories at the bottom, I don't know what other newspaper does that.

 

If the "visual experts" are taking the lead on all stories, how do you break news?

Again, most traditionally print outlets suck at video. If I want to watch a half-ass video, I'll watch a buddy Facebook Live while he's eating Cheetos, not some schmuck at the scene of a one-alarm fire.

 

At my last stop, the attitude was to get it up on the web first and any mistakes would be caught later before it went in the paper. They only corrected the most egregious errors after a dozen people or so jumped their shit in the comments. If a copy editor fixed errors on a page proof, no one went back to fix the online version.