Denver Post to cut possibly two-thirds of copy editors

I once wrote that a player shit 6 for 8 from the floor.

It was caught. Thank God for copy editors.

 

This came from a copy editor who didn't have anyone else around to check the page. The j-school line of "several eyes on the page" is BS, but professors haven't been in newsrooms since linotype went out of style.

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/80588/

 

What happened on the other 2? (Old Lewis Grizzard joke)

 

Just spitballing here ...

My hunch is that we'll see the Denver Post (and many other daily newspapers as we currently know them) convert into a daily "magazine" with a lot of non-deadline content (features, takeouts, investigations, columns and wire copy) that can be edited and designed by relatively few people during the hours when assignment editors are in the building. That's one way to avoid a need for copy editors (or as many of them, anyway) and still put out a print product with a press time of, let's say, 8 p.m. (The days of a baseball page produced on deadline are numbered.)

"After-hours" material (sports events, city council meetings, cop briefs, etc.) would exclusively go to the website, which would carry breaking news throughout the day as usual. I suspect you'll probably see a handful of "copy editors" left in the newsroom working, say, a 6 p.m.-2 a.m. shift to back-read the online dispatches for errors and libel, etc. -- basically serving as goalies against massive fuck-ups, but probably unable to put eyes on every piece of content.

I see that as a precursor to the eventual day when the print product goes away entirely. As long as print products are still viably generating some revenue, they can't shut off the presses right now (even though that's every publisher's biggest wet dream), so this is one possible middle ground. Which means the Denver Post and other newspapers that are eliminating copy editors might be industry trendsetters. If done right -- with compelling, thoughtful content -- the magazine approach might actually work if readers -- traditional, often older, we-like-to-touch-paper readers -- find it acceptable. (Yes, there are several "ifs" in that last sentence.)

On the other hand, if the Post, et al, are deluded into thinking they can still produce a traditional daily newspaper with fewer copy editors, they're setting themselves up for failure. And trouble.

Just a thought.

 

The trouble with that plan, reformed, is that print readers like the paper the way it is. They buy it for the stuff that in the plan gets shipped to the Web. And newspapers will never, ever make enough advertising revenue off their Web sites to compensate for having enough people to produce enough news that anyone would want it. The Web's a lot like the airline industry in one regard -- traffic does not generate nearly enough income to compensate for costs.

 

There aren't many of them out there any more, but my dad is one who still thinks it's not news until it's in the paper. That demographic is probably just big enough to keep print editions going. The rest are getting it for the printed ads and coupons.

At some point there's going to be a shift some how -- a move to mostly online while not as profitable will also not cost as much to produce either in personnel or raw materials -- and I've wondered since this news broke if the Post in some way has this in mind. When it happens they're going to have to tell these loyal customers to eff off. In a way they already have.

 

You're right that readers like their newspaper the way it is. But that's not the point I'm arguing.

The Denver Post has decided that a newspaper with the quality that we have come to know and love is a luxury that they cannot afford to produce. With fewer people on the desk -- the people necessary for getting the paper out the door -- they're going to have to do something different. They're going to have to reinvent what the print product is.

Right now, the print product is a stronger revenue producer than the Web and, you're right, it doesn't make kill it now. (I won't go so far as to say that the Web "never, ever" will generate enough revenue to support the enterprise, though. There's also no doubt that media organizations are going to continue to get smaller.)

I'm simply saying that if the Post (or any other publishing company) intends to publish a print product with fewer people to produce it, they're going to have to redefine what a newspaper is and what it does until the day that it no longer makes sense to produce a printed product. (And that day is coming, sadly.)

The "daily magazine" approach is one possible solution. Will it work? Maybe, but only the marketplace ultimately will determine that. It doesn't take an MBA to know that doing the same thing with fewer people won't make financial sense in the long haul. Readers will notice, and circulation will continue to dwindle, and revenue will decline. But if they change the product, they may have a chance.

 

Yeah. If I had a dollar for every time I had to tell one of our reporters, "We don't have time for you to fuck things up when they don't need to be fucked up," I'd be on a beach somewhere with an umbrella drink in hand.

One of my favorites was to get a story pop into the system at 9 p.m., some non-deadline feature that wasn't on any budget anywhere and no one but the reporter knew it was coming. "Oh, I thought I told *some name* that was coming. Didn't they tell you?"

In sports, there are enough things to be dealt with out of necessity - West Coast games, rain delays, extra innings/overtime games - where people who create problems can find somewhere else to be a pain in the ass.

 

When the baby boomers die out, newspapers will follow. They might be available online or something, but I think the print editions will be gone. There are two people in my neighborhood who still get the paper and both are over 60.

They still like their morning paper. Most of the rest of us have gotten used to going online...

 

I can't see the print edition dying out entirely. There is no way the advertising revenue will be even close. Isn't online advertising ineffective/inefficient at best?

 

You're probably not far off the mark, Hack ...

Another beancounter benefit of your plan would be -- like magazines -- the ability to have a much smaller reporting staff. A paper heavy on features and non-deadline pieces can use freelancers much more. No benefits, working space or materials to provide.

And as someone else noted, small- and mid-sized dailies will continue to use more and more reader submitted content. Especially photos. Hope it doesn't get to that for larger papers like The Denver Post, but who knows anymore.

 

Back to the main topic at hand... This is a serious union shop. Is this going to be a last hired, first fired scenario?