Once a sub-editor, always a sub-editor, that's my view. I can't read anything over for people without a pen gripped in my right hand, or 'track changes' selected in Word. My late best friend Ian never forgave me for editing a letter he was sending to his bank manager. In my defence, m'lud, he did shove it under my nose when I was tunnelling my way through a pile of student work.
Poor old subs have always been undervalued. Whoever said they were just failed reporters needed a jab in the eye with an em ruler. That'll be the subs who turn turgid prose into polished English, spot legal howlers that would land the paper in court, and write snappy headlines . . .
That's why I am still rolling my eyes a lot after reading the article in Monday's Guardian newspaper which was responding to a blog from Roy Greenslade. He's a man who has developed some very strange views after moving from editing newspapers to being a meeja commentator.
Greenslade reckons that there's a case for sub-editors to stay on national newspapers, but not on magazines or local papers. I am still scratching my head over his cock-eyed logic. Clearly it's a long time since he had to bash cryptic offerings from 'correspondents' (i.e. non-journalists) into shape or save a reporter from their own ignorance when it comes to knowledge of your patch or ensuring that a technically-complex article in a magazine is accurate.
We all know there's a revolution under way in the media, and that cost-cutting can be better described as massacring across the sector. Multi-skilling – something which those of us who started out 20-odd years ago turned our delicate noses up at – has now become a necessary fact of life.
But I raised an eyebrow at the following quote from Greenslade: "There are other things to take on board too, such as the inflow of a "new wave" of highly-educated, well-trained young journalists with digital knowledge. I might be idealistic, but I do believe their work - on camera, on video and in text form - will need less scrutiny than used to be the case."
Journalism training has changed hugely in those 20 years. Newspapers and magazines have more or less handed it all over to universities in the UK. The course I teach on turns out some damn good young journalists – but their work still needs editing, be it text or image-based. My work needs editing, for heaven's sake. And according to the last line of the Guardian article, so does Greenslade's!
Everyone needs an editor. One sports desk I worked on, we boasted one of the best sports journalists in the UK as a contributor. Lovely guy, but his stream of consciousness column needed editing with a pick axe. The sports editor never cottoned on why the old hands used to hide in the loos until some long-suffering casual had been allocated the column to sub.
You'll understand now why I have such an aversion to those amongst the self-published brigade who claim they don't need their beautiful prose touching. Yeah, yeah, in your dreams . . .
