Rumours of sub-editors' demise are only slightly exaggerated
Whoa, seriously? Now a popular US television drama is sledging newspaper sub-editors? It's not enough that the newspaper industry and its people are undergoing the biggest upheaval in its history?
I was sitting back and relaxing and watching Parenthood recently, when all of a sudden it happened. One of its characters, the high school year book photographer, was told he had been sacked as the snapper and "demoted to layout". Demoted! Television scriptwriters, if you don’t mind, have weighed in and signalled the passing of the sub-editor - even if only in passing.
Most of my decade or so as a newspaper sub-editor was spent on "layout", i.e. designing, co-ordinating and producing news pages. It seems I was in a career cul de sac all that time.
But as painful as this observation is, the writing has been on the wall for some time. In just a generation, sub-editors have gone from the most feared denizens of a newsroom to near extinction.
And not only extinct. It would seem that the newspaper sub-editor is being slowly written out of history. In Australia, the title ‘sub-editor’ has been expunged and replaced by ‘producer’.
About fours years ago, newspaper publisher Fairfax announced a renewed commitment to "quality journalism" while, in almost the same breath, committing to fewer in-house sub-editors. Thus was born the equation: Fewer subs = higher quality journalism!
It was also rumoured around that time that a big consultancy firm, after careful consideration, had advised a newspaper group that sub-editing was simply "double-handling".
OK then, what would a newspaper bereft of sub-editors look like? Perhaps there would be more lawsuits against the newspaper? It only takes one word, a "not" for example, to go missing for a newspaper to enter a world of legal and financial pain. You leave the "not" out of "the litigious multi-millionaire pleaded not guilty to sex charges", and you are having earnest conversations with lawyers.
Not too long ago, I found myself inserting a "not" into the newspaper’s editorial no less, thus rescuing the intended meaning and preventing the opposite from appearing.
The absence of subs would guarantee clumsy, ill-fitting headlines in the printed product. There would also undoubtedly be more typographical errors without the "double-handling". A newspaper's distinctive and authoritative "house style" would be become history.
And that's if the pages have been laid out. Without layout sub-editors, the paper takes on a grey wall-of-text text look and more difficult to negotiate for the reader.
Even within the newsroom there are those who don’t get it. I recall a young reporter who was being advised by a sub-editor against running something in her column, as the same information was to appear elsewhere in the edition. Senior sub-editors are in a great position to know what is scheduled to appear on other pages. Reporters less so. This particular reporter responded by saying that she wanted to do whatever was required to not upset the "production desk". Now the eager-to-please sentiment was nice, but what was more disturbing? That pleasing us was more important than a double-up appearing in the paper; or that we were dismissed as some kind of "production" tradespeople who had to be placated?
Newsflash: Sub-editors were reporters once too. Some of us were very good. Some reporters continue reporting, others veer towards the subs' desk for various reasons. The hours may suit some. The night penalties might be attractive. The nature of the work can be a factor.
While working on a newspaper overseas, I listened as an Australian news editor was talking with a group of colleagues hailing from the US, Australia, England and Thailand. In one anecdote he mentioned in passing that he was filing a report for his newspaper. The Columbia School of Journalism graduate looked up wide-eyed. "You can write?" she asked, as if he had just confessed to being a concert oboist. Yes Virginia, there are sub-editors who can write. Almost all of us. I was stunned at her question as I had just taken up a sub-editor's role on the back of three years as a senior sports reporter elsewhere.
So sub-editors can write, have an eye for quality assurance and meet deadlines like a boss. But with the industry still bottoming out, we just have to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.
