June 25, 2008 – 6:57 pm
I don’t write about my profession or my career much. I became a copy-editor for lack of a better alternative, and I hated it every second of the way. I still copy-edit one day a week, but as soon as I had the chance to get out of that field, I did so.
But I feel like I really need to say something about this.
It was one thing when they began laying off copy-editors so they could consolidate them into regional centers that service several newspapers. My own corporation pioneered this practice (my paper is safe because we’re too remote). But now, they’re experimenting with outsourcing copy-editing to India.
Let’s think about this.
Let’s think about this outside the argument of whether the practice of outsourcing is ethical.
Copy-editors are held to impossibly high standards. We’re expected to know things about the English language that no one things about, like how there’s no hyphen in “nonprofit” (even though it is ALWAYS written “non-profit” in all unedited copy I’ve EVER seen). Not only that, but we’re expected to adapt to the local dialect practiced by the individual paper, which is sure to have its own little quirky rules (like never using the verb “impact”, unless you’re literally talking about one object colliding with another).
I was not a good copy-editor. In my opinion, there are not many. It takes a unique personality to relish this kind of job, and to be successful, because every mistake is like a spear through your heart. Yours are the last eyes to touch the newspaper before it becomes incarnate. When you make a mistake, there’s no, “Well you’re only human,” pep talk, at least not in my experience. It is pointed out to you by every person in the newsroom like a booger sticking out of your nose. Letters are written to the newspaper. Snide voicemails are forwarded to your phone. People make jokes about the paper in town. The person at the video games store asks if you know “who the terrible proofreaders are at the paper,” because they happened to know the word stationary was used when the word stationery should have been used instead.
What I’m saying is that it is a daunting task for someone who has been speaking and studying the English language their entire life.
And they want to outsource this to people who speak English as a second language?
That makes sense.
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