How many eyeballs

A discussion regarding how many editors you need in the journalism business continues in our industry as online gets larger and newspapers (in many areas but not the Grand Strand) get smaller.

In our newsroom, a typical local story for print is written and reviewed by the reporter, edited by a content editor for context, fairness, clarity and writing style, edited by a copy editor who writes a  headline and also checks grammar, spelling, context, fairness, clarity and then is reviewed by a copy desk slot who sends the story on to print.

Breaking online stories - typically just the top of the news - are written and reviewed by a reporter and checked by the online editors. Longer versions or entire stories, particularly those that will appear in the print version, go through the more rigorous checking that I describe for print journalism.

The industry discussion about editing focuses on how different an online reader is from a print reader. It basically centers on whether the tolerance for typos and less context is higher for an online reader who trades those qualities in favor of urgency and brevity.

I hear from readers regularly who find errors in the paper and demand higher quality. I don't hear nearly so much from online readers about these concerns. Interesting.

Comments

[Colleen Scott]

Page 3A today: headline: "Missile defense to make debut on rogue satelite": Spell check would have revealed the error: Satellite (2 l's)