SB Nation pulls Daniel Holtzclaw longform piece

Depends on what you're trying to do. If you're doing clickbait trash, editors are almost pointless, and their skillet has been phased out. If you're trying to do ambitious stuff or sensitive stuff, good editors are more important than ever, because there are so few with experience and great judgment who are available. I think SBN and Rolling Stone thought they were in great shape and would probably now argue editors could have saved them from the messes they made.

 

What's the point, at this point?

 

I'd say hard to find. You're talking people with some an eye for style, spelling, grammar, etc., plus the ability to rework structure of sentences, phrasing and whole damn stories. They often need to not just be cogs in the machine, but also willing to step up and tell someone who worked very hard on something it's just not good and needs massive changes, but also maintain some level of relationship after. Throw in a lot of editors having to manage often dominant personalities, you're damn right they're hard to find.

 

So, all those editors laid off in the last several years were no good?

 

Some were probably very good, some were only OK. Same with the editors still around. I'd still argue very good editors are in short supply all over because it's a wide-ranging job that's not easy.

 

I doubt much thought was given to those types of skills to most of the front-line and copy editors laid off over the past few years. Newspapers don't value editing, except insofar as making a story fit the hole, slapping a headline on it and making deadline.

 

How many magazine editors have been laid off?

Also, do managers know that their current editors suck? Are they scanning the waiver wire for an upgrade, or do they just keep their sucky editors when good ones get let go?

 

I don't know that current editors suck. I know at most newspapers there is too much for too few people to do it well.

 

I don't think this one falls into the category of "not enough time/money/staff."

They could have had a dozen editors on it, and Glenn Stout was going to get his way even if he had to mansplain it all the way up to the CEO. Because, remember:

 

Magazines are different from newspapers, I think. The squeeze hasn't been as bad, and I'd say the writers have taken a bigger hit than editors. Magazines are pretty editor driven, and editing long features takes some real skill and touch. (The luxury they have, compared to their newspaper brothers and sisters, is time.) And writers tend to be loyal to editors rather than titles, meaning they come as a package deal. So the good ones tend to get poached. Since Granger got fired at Esquire, there's been a little feeding frenzy—other places knew people would leave if asked, which they wouldn't have before. They've been picked up by GQ, Time, WIRED. I've actually been pleasantly surprised by the number who have found good landing spots.

Magazines are really their own tiny ecosystem. The rules there don't really apply anywhere else—except book publishing, maybe? I don't know.

 

No. Mine was a general comment about the industry and editors. Though in this case, the time frames are crazy and the eidtors seem to be cowed or shot down.

 

Agree with Ace, as usual. The fundamental problem here was the ridiculous squeeze. It was an attempt to do complicated magazine work on Internet time. And I find the hard deadline—noon on Wednesday or whatever it was—strange. I mean, I guess that's how you keep a weekly schedule, but it's not like a giant printing press in North Carolina was waiting for pages.