Denver Post to cut possibly two-thirds of copy editors

"Hey, I got this box of rubbers at a yard sale for 2/3ds off! They've all got pinholes in the middle, but they should still catch most everything, right?"

 

Right before I was was pushed out, we had just started blogging and I actually got into trouble for filing my blog entries to the desk like I would any other story rather than just post it to the site on my own...

One of the guys I worked with got into a lot of trouble a couple days later when he made a stupid mistake that any desk would have caught. It was an honest mistake, the kind you make when you're filing a shitload of copy during training camp, but it was pretty embarrassing for him.

You need someone else to read your stuff. Period.

 

To borrow a line from one of my university professors....

"Sounds to me like a God damn disaster in the making"

 

You would think, after The Rocky closed down, the Post would clean up with advertisers that prefer print (and there are still quite a few out there).

The fact that they aren't disturbs me even more than seeing the copy desk targeted for elimination.

 

This.

 

So if you don't have copy editors or send online content to someone else but still fuck up, it's all on you? That's bullshit. People make mistakes and as has been noted a line of defense is copy editors.

The lawsuit angle definitely should be worthy of consideration in any newsroom discussion.

 

One of the things that I think would be fascinating in all this is how the workflow changes and how the schedules would change. I always found it very unsettling how the majority of the work (and important work) was done at the end of the night, when virtually no one with a title and any power was left in the newsroom. And I know that's the case at most papers.

The room that was full of managers and top editors, all the reporters, etc., from 8 a.m.-6 p.m., but after that, there were tumbleweeds rolling through the place. Cut out the majority of the copy editors, make reporters write their own headlines (after the pages are designed - most at night), and who is going to do the night work? If some of these people with titles who think it'll be fine to gut the copy desk start having to work 2 p.m.-midnight or something like that, it'll be interesting to see their reaction.

 

If they're losing that many pages from the daily section, one would think a couple writers would be on the chopping block as well...

The Post lost at least one sports copy editor in the last round of buyouts.

 

As someone who's working for a company where the rumors are we're going to either cut half the copy editors or combine all of them to handle the work for a dozen magazines and get rid of the rest - those who make the cut will likely compete in some Hunger Games-style competition for their job - this news isn't as surprising as it would have been in the past, when, of course, it would have been unthinkable.

 

They've already gotten rid of the late edition. I'm not sure if it's web-only or what or if that's only temporary.

 

At my old paper, we'd have a copy-editing intern every summer, and for the most part, they would be reporters at heart. I would tell the ones who seemed to have aptitude for copy editing that they should go into that part of the business, that reporters were a dime a dozen, but stud copy editors could all but pick their job, because hardly anyone, relatively speaking, wanted to be a copy editor.

That was a mere 10 years or so ago. May as well be a century ago.