I don't know how much this has to do with copy editing, but I'm going to talk about advertising and journalism anyway.

It seems that the only thing people know about the future of journalism is that the way advertising operates is going to have to change. Why? Well, we all seem to blame it on the Internet. Actually, we seem to blame Internet users for not wanting to watch advertisements or pay subscriptions.

But before newspaper corporations and businesses that are having a hard time advertising start pointing fingers (well, they kind of have already), they need to realize that they are the ones who created this situation. It's not the Internet's fault, and it's not the users' faults either.

Come to think of it, it's not even the fault of the companies who built Internet sites (although they're more at fault than anyone else, because they chose not to charge people with subscriptions). Back when the Web was starting out, people weren't thinking about making money. It was a cool thing with lots of potential; companies probably weren't thinking about how one day, that cool thing would be both their lifesaver and their downfall at the same time.

In short, the Internet, its users, and the companies who are trying to profit from it are all at fault for the mess we're in today. But this whole mess was unavoidable. If companies had bombarded people with ads and/or charged for subscriptions from the get go, who knows, the Internet might not have caught on as fast...

Quantity VS Quality... the endless debate

The American Journalism Review's article, "The Quality Control Quandary," got me even more depressed about the future of journalism than I was during lecture today. Although several of the sources quoted in Carl Sessions Stepp's piece seemed either optimistic or neutral about how news is becoming increasingly web oriented, I can't say I feel the same way.

Sure, more editors does not necessarily ensure better editing. But, in most cases, it increases the chances at errors getting caught.

This opinion is not groundbreaking. In fact, it seems that most people in the field of journalism agree. So why is it that editors are the first to get fired?

It comes down to priorities, as all business decisions do. But these priorities seem to be leading journalism into a bad direction.

It's not just the fact that fewer editors means those who survived round 17 of job cuts have to work twice as hard, but they have to work twice as hard as their initial twice as hard because of the demands of readers. With the Internet, we want more, faster. Poor editors! How the heck are they supposed to get anything done other than the bare minimum? If journalism continues like this, stories will be press releases, not watch dog-esque, hard-hitting news.

Although editors do not determine the depth at which reporters delve into their stories, if cuts are being made so willy-nillyly (sorry about the fake words I’m using), who’s to say the cuts won’t transfer to the reporters? In fact, it already has.

At the very least, the huge demands made on the speed at which we receive news is making reporters focus less on asking probing questions, and more on asking “who,” “what,” “where,” and “when” and “how.” Who cares about “why.”

Regardless, we must be careful not to blame consumers. Just because there’s an increasing demand doesn’t mean the demand was entirely brought about by the consumers. Much of the demand was created because online news agencies thought they could do it all.

If they stuck with in depth stories or tip of the iceberg ones, perhaps there would be less stress overall. Niche news seems to be the most realistic bet for our evolving world.

Outsourcing editors

Because there is more and more text that needs editing (with the Internet exploding, yada yada), employers looking to save a few bucks have gone knocking on India's door for editing positions, rather than helping their own countrymen out in a time of desperation. Time of desperation or not, with every job under the moon being outsourced to India, it's only fitting that editing the English language go over there too.

After all, our hard-working, low-waged economic frenemies have always answered the door. And they've worked their butts off on the job.

But as much as I love and respect Indians, I have a problem with this. Not only is English not the primary language of the majority of the India copy editors, but it is not even a language that many of them are fluent in. Sure, they know vocabulary well, but there have been problems with how well outsourced editors know English grammar.

One American business owner said, "[T]he language barrier was too much to overcome. Many mistakes were made in trying to do work in English (mostly grammatical errors, not spelling errors) which made the entire project a waste since I had to go through and correct (reword) a ton of the work." (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=144311)

The argument could be made that many of the Americans looking to outsource did not spend enough time looking for a quality place to find employees with great English grammar. But those who are actually good probably demand more money. Even if that's less than you'd have to spend to hire American, they (Indians) probably will have plenty of opportunities from other American businessmen, because the demand for outsourcing will always be there.

But with this economic climate, rather than looking abroad, employers need to look within. For example, they need to look at already-discouraged soon-to-be journalism graduates who are willing to work for cheap. Wink, wink.