Alan Mutter, one of the more insightful journalism commentators out there, poses a provocative, confounding question that has been examined by every newspaper editor in the country over the past few years of contraction: How many editors can a newspaper afford?
While it would be heretical at most major news organizations to "railroad" stories from a reporter's keyboard directly into print, several publications, including a few surprisingly large ones, are allowing reporters to point, click and post words and images directly to the newspaper's website. If the work is good enough to slap on the web without further human intervention, why isn't it good enough to go directly on a web press?
On the other hand, a compelling case can be made that newspapers would debase themselves journalistically, commercially and, perhaps, even fatally by abandoning the disciplined reporting and professional editing that makes their content uniquely valuable in an age of frequently impulsive, often repulsive and usually unverified Twittering.
Does a story need to be edited by more than one person? (Sentence corrected after editing by reader in comments!) In fact, if the writer is good enough and understands his audience, does the story need to be edited at all? Most bloggers don't have editors, outside of their own inner compass, which is an argument both for and against independent editors, depending upon your point of view.
Here the typical story is edited two or three times. A sensitive or important story is edited by as many as five or six. Yes, and even then, typos and spelling errors sneak their way into print. Meanwhile, an online story is edited once, and bloggers aren't edited, unless they request it.
My experience is that publishers and process engineers question editors because it appears as if the service they perform is rework. If the writers did the job right, why would we need someone to check it? Of course, editors do much more than edit copy. They teach. We aren't the New York Times. Reporters don't come to us fully baked. (No one does, actually.) Editors help guide coverage. They listen to readers and act as the reader's advocate, questioning assumptions and plugging holes. They think about tomorrow and next week and next month, trying to see the forest rather than the trees.
We have also developed specialists. A good conceptual editor who can inspire reporters may not be a good technical editor who can find grammatical flaws or write pithy headlines. And with an operation that starts at 7 a.m. and ends after midnight, you need people who span two work shifts.
All of that is to say that the number of times a story is edited is only partially relevant to the number of editors needed. Personally, I take the traditional line. I think a typical print story should be read by two editors, the one who assigned the story and worked with the reporter in the pre-editing stage, and a copy editor.
Online stories are different. Print is permanent. Online, we can post-edit, and readers serve as editors, pointing out mistakes and asking questions. The record can be changed. The story in paper is static; the story online evolves.
Editors make up about 20% of our staff. Are we top heavy with editors? I don't think so, and I doubt the retired English teachers I hear from would either.