“I’ve worked for newspapers that have unwisely cut back on sub-editing,” writes Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator, in a tribute to what the English call a sub-editor, in particular his magazine’s own sub-editor, Peter Robins. The sub-editor is the one who fixes the prose and, as Nelson puts it, “saving the writer from himself.” It’s a position we call by several names, from executive to assistant to copy editor.
The good sub-editor does what some might call “over-editing.” But there’s a reason for this care, as seen by what happens when no one does it.
It seems to work, at first, because there is no immediate cliff-edge drop in quality. But the rot accumulates. Errors creep in that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. Sloppy writing goes unchecked, flabby ideas go unchallenged. And even then, the newspapers don’t suffer immediate penalty – readers who have been with the same title for years put up with a lot, before giving up on it.
But when they do, the reputation for quality is hard to win back. The management respond to falling revenues with even more cuts, which send even more readers into despair. This is what I call the cycle of doom.
This is certainly true, but Nelson misses a big problem, which is that the drop in quality may actually help the magazine in the short run – and maybe in the medium run too. The problems with the writer’s argument is that the badness of a lot of badly written, or badly argued or evidenced, articles isn’t obvious on the first reading, which is all most magazine and newspaper articles will ever get.
In fact, the problems make the articles work for the magazine. The problems that good editing would have fixed — the thundering definitive-sounding conclusion that doesn’t follow from the argument, say — will make those who agree with it cheer and those who don’t snarl, and both cases make the article one that gets lots of readers and creates lots of discussion. Which is, of course, the way the value of an article is most easily measured. The problems themselves gives its critics an easy and inviting way to respond to the article, and their reaction gives its advocates an easy and inviting target, and the resulting discussion makes it look better than it is.
In the long run, Nelson says, and he’s probably right, or at least I hope he’s right,
Having good sub editors – nay, great sub editors – is essential for any publication that takes good writing seriously. And not for nostalgic reasons, but for reasons of hard-headed capitalism: money follows quality. . . . I’m not saying that there will be as many sub editors around in 50 years time. But I am saying that the newspapers and magazines who will be around in 50 years time will have bloody good sub editors.