Bay Area News Group memo: ‘We will be eliminating a layer of valuable editing’

Bay Area News Group memo: ‘We will be eliminating a layer of valuable editing’

Elimanating most proofreading and practically all copy editing.

Bay Area News Group is losing 11 copy desk staffers “rather than cutting more deeply into the ranks of content producers or neglecting our digital needs,” says a memo from James “Bert” Robinson, managing editor/content. He writes:

From: James Robinson
Date: Apr 22, 2016 6:02 AM
Subject: Some changes to our editing and production processes
To: &BANG News All

We’re launching a series of changes to the assigning and copy editing process in an attempt to manage a planned loss of approximately 11 FTEs.Unknown We are choosing this course, as many papers have across the country, rather than cutting more deeply into the ranks of content producers or neglecting our digital needs.

The bottom line is that we will be eliminating a layer of valuable editing across most of the copy desk — what is known in desk parlance as the rim. The result:

* Staff stories that go inside sections will not be copy-edited. The assigning editor will be the only read. (In sports, late stories that do not go through an assigning editor will continue to be read on the desk, once.) Stories for our East Bay weeklies will not be copy-edited./CONTINUES

* Staff stories for section covers will receive one read on the desk rather than the current two.

* Proofreading will be reduced.

This is going to place a new level of responsibility on reporters and, especially, assigning editors. Many of the ways in which the desk bails us out — often without us noticing — will disappear. That will mean:

* All assigning editors must run Tansa on stories before moving them to the desk, and all proper names will have to be cq’ed. Grammar mistakes that make it through an assigning editor are highly likely to appear in print.

* Reporters and editors will need to be more familiar with AP and BANG style.

* Budgetlines will need to include accurate deadlines and lengths. Desk folk who receive overly long stories will not have time to redo page designs; they will be instructed to cut from the end (on some occasions, early notice to the desk that a story is running long may avoid this fate). When deadlines are blown, the desk may need to grab a web version of the story and move on.

* Editors (or reporters) will need to write a print headline for each story that designers can tweak to fit; it will not be the same as the web headline. Copy editors cannot write headlines for inside stories because they will not be reading them. We will also ask you to write a longer summary headline to give additional guidance to the designer; we will be adding a new field to your story templates to make this adjustment easier.

* Photographers and photo editors will need to exercise a new level of care over photo captions, many of which will now be tweaked by designers to fit rather than written from scratch by a copy editor. They need to be tightly written, use correct grammar and agree factually with the story. We would like proper name spelling to be double-checked in captions as well; comparing to the story should be sufficient.
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We are going to start these new responsibilities for editors and reporters beginning Monday, April 25. The first week we’ll have additional staffing on the copy desk to help the adjustment, and there will be a bit of a backstop for you. Beginning May 2, though, the new regimen begins.

These sorts of changes are not easy. The quality of our work — of your work — is what attracts people to our newspapers and websites. We appreciate the efforts of the folks who remain on our productions desks, our reporters, photographers and editors to deliver the Bay Area’s best news report every day.

Bert Robinson
Managing Editor/Content
Bay Area News Group
The Mercury News/East Bay Times
http://jimromenesko.com/2016/04/22/bay-area-news-group-memo-we-will-be-eliminating-a-layer-of-valuable-editing/