Comment from Brian
Time February 11, 2010 at 1:47 pm

Is it true that the Ventura paper is changing its name to the Ventura County Lone Star?

Comment from Patricia
Time February 11, 2010 at 2:14 pm

Brian, that is hilarious! And Steve, this is a wonderfully written article that makes so many good points. Hope we see more coverage of this tragic decision.

Comment from J.
Time February 11, 2010 at 3:56 pm

Right, because a copy editor in Texas doesn’t know when to use hyphens as well as one in California. Sheesh, give me a break.

Comment from Jim Thomsen
Time February 11, 2010 at 5:01 pm

My name is Jim Thomsen, and I’m the night-and-weekend news copy editor at the Kitsap Sun.

Not to toot my own horn, but I’m a Kitsap native who makes several saves a night based on my near-comprehensive knowledge of this area’s culture, geography and history. I know that the Kitsap sheriff in the 1970s was Art Morken, not “Al” Morken, as a reporter once wrote for an A1 story. I know that Fay Bainbridge State Park was named after a man, not a woman, and that former state Rep. Pat Lantz is a woman, not a man. I know the difference between the Port Gamble S’Klallam and the Lower Elwha S’Klallam tribes, and the difference between the Port Orchard and Port Townsend and Port Gamble, and the difference between the Stillaguamish and Skookumchuck rivers. I know that Port Orchard Mayor Lary Coppola’s name is spelled with one “r.” I know that state Rep. Sherry Appleton’s name is spelled with two.

Nobody in Corpus Christi, Texas knows any of that.

Sad to think that nobody at Scripps seems to care about any of that.

In time, I know the readers of the Sun sure will.

Comment from Tommy
Time February 11, 2010 at 5:28 pm

Jim, you can’t leave out these two gems: the best spot in town to enjoy a Guiness is the Manette and the Poor House is actually spelled “Pour”.

Keep up the good work!

~ Tommy

Comment from Jim Thomsen
Time February 11, 2010 at 5:57 pm

Tommy, how can you forget the Fuzzy Naval tavern by the shipyard gate?

And our local true-crime/thriller author is Gregg Olsen … not “Greg Olson.”

Comment from James H
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:17 pm

But isn’t there a middle ground here? Local knowledge is certainly important when editing stories. However, a lot of that knowledge (IMO) should be concentrated at the city desk, not at the copy desk. And when you’re talking about regional or statewide stories, can’t a nonlocal copy desk handle that burden as well as the local desk?

Comment from Carrie K.
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:28 pm

James H., a very simplistic answer is yes. But the more complex picture is this: nearly every national, regional and state story can (and should) be localized. Again, you bump up against a lack of knowledge. Does the local area have an air base? An international port? A huge Hispanic citizenry? What is important to local readers and what larger issues affect them? Only local copy editors take the time to tie all of their news stories to their specific readership. Even in these tight times, copy editors still struggle to localize and enhance copy so it has the most impact for readers. The wire services also are cutting back, so the quality and quantity of copy is taking a hit. Local copy desks are where its at for newspapers who really care.

Comment from Steve Greenberg
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:44 pm

Jim, your comments perfectly illustrate my point: there are things that won\’t be caught if you don\’t have deep local knowledge, and readers will notice such mistakes and think the paper is amateurish. By the way, I know most of the places you mention from my many years at the Seattle P-I.

J., my point is not to dis Texas copy editing, which I\’m sure is perfectly fine, but Jim\’s comment proves the value of having local staffers with institutional knowledge.

Comment from Krishnan Anantharaman
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:49 pm

I think it dishonors the profession of copy editing to equate it with catching typos and cataloging local trivia. We have dictionaries and phone books for that. The fact is the greatest copy-desk saves are the ones no one notices, and even the greatest copy editors miss stuff. We can’t claim credit for all the typos we catch unless we are willing to take the blame for all the ones we don’t. (And let’s face it: That’s a lot.)

So copy editors who cherish their own jobs and the profession itself need to rise a higher calling: making sure that stories make sense, that they are logically organized, that they are complete, that they are clear in their purpose, that they are respectful of the reader and faithful to the truth. Ultimately, this is how newspaper content can differentiate itself from the blah-blah-sphere and other assorted (and sordid) bits and bytes that pass for journalism today.

Comment from Jim Thomsen
Time February 11, 2010 at 8:37 pm

James H. : If we had a city desk capable of what you describe, I wouldn’t need to make all those saves.

Krishnan: I do all sorts of other copy-editing work, including the tasks you describe. I’m just pointing out the one thing I offer that nobody else can. There is nobody more suited to my particular job than I am. Just as there is probably nobody LESS suited to the job of editing Corpus Christi Caller-Times stories than I am.

Comment from Dave Thomas
Time February 11, 2010 at 11:23 pm

Of course, this comes months after Scripps pulled the same move with its other Texas newspapers. As a San Angelo alum, I had the same response: http://bottlecaps.typepad.com/.....ngelo.html

Comment from Greg Finley
Time February 11, 2010 at 11:46 pm

Is it really that terribly difficult for a copy editor to use the Internet and research whether a city in California is truly called Oxnard?

Comment from Robert Knilands
Time February 12, 2010 at 12:12 am

Copy editors had a chance to express their importance. They blew it back about a decade ago when their organization, the American Copy Editors Society, refused to do anything to fight for the worth of individual copy editors. The organization said openly it was the duty of individual copy editors to do this, and while they were doing so, they needed to keep paying dues to ACES.

Those dues got them the following: an award named after one member, lots of blathering from a recruiter who now is out of the newsroom (and yet still pushes for journalists to work unpaid internships in the hope of reward down the road in a declining industry), and even more blathering about tiny details from another person who is out of the newsroom.

The organization has so little clout that the city where it held its meeting two years ago now has one fewer daily newspaper. The city where ACES held its meeting last year is slashing its copy desk.

The moral of this story is clear: It’s time for ACES to refund the dues and to disband. Copy editors don’t benefit when the leaders of the organization have short futures in the newsroom.

To Jim Thomsen: No one cares about your batting average. A decade and a half ago, I held a story for hours so the reporter could confirm that three people had not, in fact, been charged with murder, as he had written in his haste to leave for the day. No one cared then. I guarantee no one cares now. Move on, lieutenant.

Next time — how copy editors took a dump on their hopes and dreams by allowing their positions to be transformed into “copy editor”/designer positions. It’s better than Cats! You’ll want to read it again and again!

Comment from Scooter
Time February 12, 2010 at 12:21 am

Steve: Every single story should have the full city name & state at the top of the story, just below the title, date & byline..
Every paper’s site should have the paper’s city at the top of the page.
You’re forgetting that many of us get the webpage through a link & have no idea where the story actually is.
I’ve been sent to many, many stories through Romanesko links, which BTW is how I’m reading this. And so many of them just have a dateline of: “A Brown County man was arrested in Smithville yesterday…..”
And I don’t have the faintest idea where the hell Smithville is, let alone Brown County!
A little practicality here is needed & not Belo’s idiotic attempt to ban deep links!

Comment from Jim Thomsen
Time February 12, 2010 at 3:17 am

I should add that I’m already over the shock, and that I stopped shedding tears for newspapers a long time ago. If only because Robert Knilands is right: Nobody cares about my batting average. Not in the newsroom, at least, where the only attention I get is when I make a mistake — or allow someone else’s to slip into print. I think readers may care in a small, subtle way over time. Or maybe that’s just my ego talking.

As for me, I get my nights and weekends back, I get my life back, I get my dreams back. I’m excited to shed the dead skin of one career and grow into a new one. I won’t be looking much in the rearview mirror.

Comment from Howard Owens
Time February 12, 2010 at 8:22 am

Steve, would you rather see the Star go out of business?

I’m sure I have friends who will lose their jobs in this shake up. I’ve been laid off three times in my career. It is never easy, so I hope none of my friends take offense at what I’m about to say. I’m saying this as a businessman, which means setting emotion aside and looking at this rationally.

I left Ventura because of the high cost of living. At the time I left, I probably made at least twice as much as the typical copy editor, and it still wasn’t enough, not in Ventura (of course, for years before that, I made much less in VTA, and that was a real struggle that we were still paying for at the time I left).

As executives there, we often had discussions about the high cost of living and what that would mean for retaining quality talent (and at the time I was there the Star had the most amazing news staff I’ve ever worked with) and remaining profitable. It was a very perplexing problem.

Now, I realize cost of housing has gone down since I left, but compared to other parts of the country, it’s still very expensive.

The Star, especially in these challenging times for newspapers, must certainly take some drastic measures to survive. Nobody will want to own it if it can’t remain profitable, not even a non-profit org.

As for your specific criticism, they’re completely off base. For example, how hard is it for a writer to put (CQ) after “O-Hi Frostie,” and for a copy editor to know how to handle that very basic copy proofing tactic?

As for your example of lima beans and Oxnard, that completely undercuts your thesis that copy editors must be local — it was local copy editors who allowed that mistake to make it in print. Perhaps non-local copy editors, who would be less likely to make assumptions, would more likely to the necessary follow up check to catch the error. Or perhaps not, but the point is, your point is hardly validated by this example.

There is a whole issue to legitimately bellyache about how chain newspaper companies have allowed newspaper production to become just another widget-making job. That trend, which has even taken over many family-owned newspapers, has as much to do with decades-long circulation declines as any other reason. But the fact is, many newspaper functions can be outsourced and centralized. And as a matter of survival, I don’t see many other choices for newspapers.

In his great book The Vanishing Newspaper, Philip Meyer talks about “harvesting” — something he predicted newspapers would do in their final stages — squeezing smaller and smaller profit margins from dwindling products. It’s a horrifying scenario and should make any ink-bleeding journalist’s skin crawl. But it is what we see going on now.

The flip side of the scenario, and possibly the only hope, is that maybe there is a bottom. Maybe there is a floor that newspapers will reach of reduced cost and reduced revenue that will allow them to survive another 20 or 30 years.

I’m not justifying anything newspapers executives are doing in “harvesting,” but merely acknowledging the reality of the situation. I don’t think, under current ownership schemes, competitive pressures and production practices, that they have much choice.

As for your crack about Corpus Christi — there a lot of better places to live in the United States than California. I know. I’m living in one of them (Batavia, NY). My advice to any copy editor given the chance to relocate out of California: Do it. Get the hell out of that overpriced, dirty, smoggy, crime-ridden, paved over fast sinking ship.

Comment from Bill Demarest
Time February 12, 2010 at 8:27 am

Regionalization of editing and production is nothing new for the American news industry. However, we’ve reached the point where news organization are eliminating their flexibility and capability of reacting quickly to the news by taking regionalization to the extreme. In this case, how long will it be before the editing and design operation in Corpus Christie is relocated to India or Poland?
With the new mega regionalization, there are fewer and fewer journalists handling a larger workload. The bottom line is these journalists are put in no-win situations, where they are required to work like the medical equivalent of a M.A.S.H. unit - - - focusing on the worst of the worst and doing what they can just to meet deadline. With the mega regionalization usually also comes earlier deadlines … meaning that despite our vast advances in technology, we still can’t give the average reader what they want: Late sports scores, news from live events such as town meetings and police news that isn’t a week old.
The price we pay as an industry is we do more damage to our own products, in print and online, than any competitor or medium ever could.

Comment from miss_msry
Time February 12, 2010 at 9:45 am

While agree on some points, some of your copy editors might actually like living in Corpus Christi. Be glad copy editing functions weren’t sent to India. Some Texans are familiar with Oxnard.

Comment from Andy Schotz
Time February 12, 2010 at 10:33 am

Greg, it sounds like Google could solve every fact-checking question, but it definitely does not. You often end up rummaging through tons of not-credible refuse, or finding nothing. Local knowledge avoids much of that. The folks in Texas (or wherever) would be surfing the \’Net for answers for hour, with no guarantees.

Comment from Steve Greenberg
Time February 12, 2010 at 11:25 am

Hi Howard, thanks for your good points. Yes, this is a business, and certain business decisions do have to be made. But as Bill pointed out, there are ever-fewer remaining staffers, and it\’s all they can do to filter out the worst mistakes and move on to the next task, like a M.A.S..H. unit. There will be efficiency of costs, but more mistakes made (even if out-of-town editors Google every reference), and every mistake erodes the credibility of the product just a bit more. Hard-core print newspaper readers will always purchase the product, but those folks are older and dwindling, and a product that doesn\’t impress a less-committed reader (who is perhaps watching his/her pennies) is less likely to be purchased on an ongoing basis.
And any kind of outsourcing, whether to Texas or India, just cuts more good jobs from the hard-hit newspaper business and the still-ugly U.S. employment scene.

Comment from mike
Time February 12, 2010 at 1:34 pm

Why would anyone want to subscribe to a “local” paper that’s produced out of town?

Comment from Jeff Rose
Time February 12, 2010 at 1:40 pm

I got my newspaper start on the Redding copy desk nearly 30 years ago. It’s sad to see this happen. I think it ignores the synergies of a staff working together. Certainly the headlines will be less nuanced.

Beyond that I know many of the copy editors had been beat reporters there as well. Those editors would recognize that what might be a perfectly legitimate-sounding quote from one source, for instance, would be utter nonsense coming from another. They also would recognize the differing qualities of various reporters; some copy could be trusted more than others.

There is no substitute for living in a community, paying taxes there, working with the people doing the writing. Anyone who thinks otherwise must believe reality TV shows are as good as stepping outside your front door.

Comment from J.
Time February 12, 2010 at 2:28 pm

Jim Thomsen, it sounds like you need to hire better reporters (or train them better) if they\’re making absurd mistakes such as those. Maybe your newsroom isn\’t as good as you think it is.

It all comes down to cost. Have you seen the cost of living in Texas compared to California? It\’s ridiculous.

Comment from J.
Time February 12, 2010 at 2:36 pm

Jim, you were pretty sure this would never happen:
http://www.copydesk.org/forum/.....&t=546

Remember that?

Comment from Jim Thomsen
Time February 12, 2010 at 3:47 pm

J.: I won’t speak to the quality of our reporters other than to say that most of them don’t come from Kitsap originally, and there’s no substitute for the knowledge that a native can provide. They try awfully hard, and often succeed, but things sometimes go downhill quickly when it comes to events and people who precede their tenure here. And that’s not even a criticism, just a reality. The same would be true of me if I were a reporter in, say, Corpus Christi.

And you’re so right about my ACES post. Wow. What a difference two years makes, huh? II think even then, many of us believed that there was a line of quality control that some newspaper owners simply wouldn’t cross. And they zoomed right past that line in fifth gear with nary a glance back, didn’t they?

Comment from onyx
Time February 12, 2010 at 9:02 pm

i read jim thomsen’s notes about things he knew about his local area with some emotion. it was what i felt in the early 1990s when scripps took over the paper where i worked and demoted me. it was what i felt in the mid-90s when scripps changed my beat. it was what i felt in the late 90s when the person who took over my beat was writing the obit of a former mayor and would’ve left out the fact that he was recalled if i hadn’t pointed it out — meanwhile, i was being given minimal raises and was deemed ineligible for promotion. when i left at the end of the 90s, i took about a dozen years of institutional knowledge with me. i believe i might’ve been missed for about two hours. if that. jim, i want you to know that the work you did over the years had VALUE, to the readers, to your colleagues, to the newspaper’s reputation. you were a good editor and a good journalist. i know that i was. and i still am. somewhere that isn’t scripps, though, a place where my talent, work and knowledge is appreciated — and where i’m compensated fairly.

Comment from onyx
Time February 12, 2010 at 9:06 pm

p.s. to jim: meant to say: may your future hold the same post-scripps good fortune that i have found.

Comment from David Taube
Time February 14, 2010 at 11:43 am

Sounds like a lot of unsubstantiated concerns. For the ones that actually do check out, seems like there’s a simple solution: have a chief copy editor that’s your local veteran who knows the area inside and out and then have your hoard of copy editors who do the grunt work be elsewhere.

Comment from Robert Knilands
Time February 14, 2010 at 2:47 pm

David Taube offers the non-solution solution. He must be an up-and-coming AME of presentation.

Speaking of which, I wonder if this consolidation will bring an end to the obsession about rule lines and other tiny visual details that no readers care about. Of course, the morons who support visualwordstuff probably will continue to insist that it’s possible to spend the whole shift focusing on design without cutting back on editing. That’s a mindless, pointless claim that still makes the circuit, and it probably wouldn’t die even if one desk were doing 20 papers. Whether it’s Kitsap or Corpus Christi, there are still too many non-journalists masquerading as journalists, and their legacy will be felt for some time.

Comment from Jim L.
Time February 17, 2010 at 4:36 pm

I think Harold Owens completely misses the whole point of this fiasco at the Star: quality will suffer, readers will notice and circ will go down. It’s inevitable. To suggest otherwise is simply dishonest. A bunch of CQs in the copy is no panacea.

I live in Ventura County and worked at the Star as a reporter and copy editor before moving. Up to a couple of years ago it was a good paper. But when we moved to the county a year ago and became subscribers, I was shocked by how thin and weak it had become. We eventually canceled and went with the LA Times.

You think I’m the only person who’s noticed what a shell of its former self the Star has become? When the copy editors are dumped to save a few bucks and the paper gets even worse, what do you think will happen? This race to the bottom by the knuckleheads at Scripps is suicide, but they’re too dense to acknowledge it. It drives me nuts to hear people say that they only way to save a paper is to hollow it out until it collapses.

Comment from Robert Knilands
Time February 20, 2010 at 1:24 am

Howard Owens often misses the point completely. In fact, it’s one of the certainties of life — death, taxes, the sun rising in the east, and Howie being clueless.

He’s not Harold, though. Somewhere there are several Harold Owenses who don’t deserve to be linked to Howie.

Comment from Igamore
Time May 13, 2010 at 2:36 pm

I’m with the Knoxville Newspaper Guild and I’m hoping to talk with one of the copy editors who was laid off in the Scripps desk relocation/consolidation. We’re expecting this to happen soon to our newspaper and I’d like to have some information about how this was handled. Our next contract negotiation is May 26. Thanks to anyone who can help.

- Wayne

igamore@hotmail.com