I reckon we still need those subs, eh?

I've attached David Marsh's comment on the Giles Coren rant. He does put a good point across that subs are more important nowadays in the digital age. What I wonder though is this - he mentions all these people who diss subs, including, might I add, colleagues in his own paper. No surprise there.

The thing is that if the people who hold the purse strings feel the same way, then the cuts are going to happen anyway right, whether or not the quality of the media product deteriotates or not.

What do you think?

Excoriating the coruscating Coren
Giles Coren's blistering rebuke to a hapless Times subeditor actually highlights what a vital role subs still play in the media

If only Giles Coren had given his email to a good subeditor before sending it, he might have got his point across effectively without revealing himself to be arrogant, petulant, pompous and, frankly, the last person you'd want to be stuck in a restaurant with.

As a sub by trade, it pains me to say it, but the foul-mouthed food critic was actually in the right: the hapless Times sub who removed a harmless sounding "a" from the last sentence of his column did subtly change the meaning and remove a joke (although one so obscure that it must be said Coren poses no immediate threat to the writers of, say, Peep Show).

What the email lacks is a sense of proportion. After ranting at length about his knowledge of Yiddish, laboriously explaining the aforementioned joke ("looking for a nosh has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob" – hilarious!), and comparing the sub to "a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance [sic] fresco and thinking jesus [sic] looks shit with a bear so plastering over it", our tortured artist turns his attention to metre: "Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on 'nosh' is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable." This, apparently, is "pre-GCSE scansion" (what kind of advanced academy of linguistics was Coren attending at 15?).

Then comes the eloquent clincher: "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." Well, to be fair, it scans perfectly.

Putting to one side the thought that being a sub at the Times right now must be about as rewarding an occupation as trying to sell Mother's Day cards to a Canoe Wife's sons, I'm struck by the fact that Coren's onanistic outburst is the latest in a series of recent attacks on subeditors. MORE

Full text of Giles Coren's rant to Times subs

Absolutely hilarious and a must read, though not for the subs at that time I suppose ...

For all the poor subs getting axed out there. You matter!

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i'm assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.
1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles

'Things are happening at the speed of light'

An uncertain future? What's going to happen next? Is the uncertainty of not knowing if your industry, job, etc is gonna be around good cos it promotes inventiveness, or is it just waaaay too depressing? Like this bit at the end of the article:

Many said, though, that they were uncertain improved editorial content would ensure a bright future — especially since most organizations failed to anticipate the changes that have wracked newsrooms in recent years.

Only 5 percent of the editors surveyed said they were confident they could predict what the newsroom would look like in five years.

"I feel I'm being catapulted into another world, a world I don't really understand," Virginian-Pilot editor Dennis Finley told PEJ. "Things are happening at the speed of light."

Study: shrinking newsrooms hurting papers' quality

NEW YORK (AP) — The many and deepening cuts at newspapers across the country are starting to take a toll on their content, according to a study being released Monday.

The challenge newspapers must meet immediately is to find more revenue on the Internet, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's study, called "The Changing Newsroom: What is Being Gained and What is Being Lost in America's Daily Newspapers."

Newspaper managers need to "find a way to monetize the rapid growth of Web readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their competitive advantage disappears."

Stories are shorter overall, the study found, and staff coverage tends to focus on local and community news.

"America's newspapers are narrowing their reach and their ambitions and becoming niche reads," the study said.

Even when foreign and national news makes it into the papers, it is being relegated to less prominent pages.

"To make the front page, it has to be a significant development or a story that we can see through Florida eyes," said Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor of the Fort Lauderdale-based South Florida Sun-Sentinel and a longtime newspaper executive.

The reasons for the newsroom cutbacks are well known: Newsprint costs have jumped, and advertising and circulation revenue have quickened their descent this year as advertisers follow readers online. Newspaper Web sites capture only a small fraction of the revenue lost as they sell fewer print ads, which fetch more money. MORE

Business v the press

This has long been discussed and lamented by journos - the erosion of journalism standards by business and shareholder demands, but it's worth highlighting again.

Profit margins have to be redefined for sure, but can we really expect our new business leaders to care about journalism? Or will they dump their stock and look for a more profitable company when the financial crunch hits too hard?

And the truth is, even if we stop whining and try and work to preserve the future of our industry, will we be able to save it?

Profit and the press: Reporting only what sells
By DAVID DIZON
abs-cbnNEWS.com

How does mass media, known also as the Fourth Estate, balance the need to make a profit while providing correct, important and relevant information to their readers?

Journalism professors and media practitioners had a crash course on the subject during the first day of the 17th Asian Media Information and Communication Center (AMIC) Annual Conference held at the Manila Hotel on Monday.

Prof. Ian Richards of the University of South Australia said the press remains as important as ever as consumers continue to look for news on radio, TV, print or online.

He added, however, that some newsrooms and journalism schools are being handled by managers with business backgrounds; people who have no deep appreciation of the role of the press in society.

"Their first and last priority is the bottomline: Is the newsroom making a profit? This focus on business ethics can have a significant impact in newsrooms as well as journalism schools," Richards said. MORE

Old school journo defends the internet

Surprise surprise. Here's an opinion article by a journalist who started in the industry in the days when pages were laid out by hand. What I do wonder sometimes though is whether people who are starting out in journalism, or in the middle of their careers rather than at the end are just as positive about the future of their industry ...

Opinion: Journalism is changing for the better
By Bobby Mathews (Contact) | Demopolis Times
Published Sunday, July 13, 2008

One of the best parts of being a journalist is learning about things before (almost) anyone else.

I’ll give you a perfect example: Several weeks ago, Demopolis Police Sgt. Tim Williams was promoted to interim chief. It took a span of three meetings — two of which were held at 8 a.m.

For those final two meetings, I was the only one in Rooster Hall who was not a member of the city government. Minutes after that meeting ended, we broke the news before anyone else on our Web site.

Then I was invited into a private meeting for the police force, where Demopolis Mayor Cecil P. Williamson announced Williamson’s promotion. Again, I was the only person there who was not a city employee.

And there’s the paradox for many journalists. Robert Duvall, in the excellent movie “The Paper” said it this way: “We move in their world, but it is their world — not ours.”

The world of journalists is changing, though. In the old days, we would have held that news for publication in the next day’s newspaper. MORE

Outsourcing subbing? Where else but India

Remember this company folks - Mindworks. It's one of the first Indian companies to do copyediting for US newspapers from India, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

Copyediting? Ship the Work Out to India

Not far from New Delhi, Mindworks now has eight overseas clients, and it's mounting a big effort to go after more U.S. publications
by Nandini Lakshman

In a squat, gray building in Noida, a leading outsourcing destination 15 miles from New Delhi, is the headquarters of Mindworks Global Media. Here, 90 young men and women peer into their computers, editing copy, designing and laying out pages, and even reporting over the phone. Mindworks isn't a new publication. It's a company to which media groups in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.—including the Miami Herald and South China Morning Post—outsource work that journalists and copyeditors usually do. The Mindworks staff works two to three shifts a day, seven days a week. Tony Joseph, 46, an editor-turned-entrepreneur, is Mindworks' founder and chief executive. He sometimes drops by at 6 a.m. to see his employees, just when U.S. clients are putting their papers to bed.

Mindworks has been handling outsourcing assignments from non-Indian publishers for four years. It expects plenty more business as the cost-cutting in U.S. and European print media grinds on. Some Western publishers do their outsourcing in-house—Thomson Reuters (TRI), for instance, has moved basic Wall Street reporting on U.S., European, and Gulf equities to a new bureau in Bangalore. But other media companies prefer to outsource to the Indians directly. On June 24, Mindworks made global headlines when the Associated Press reported that the company had taken on copyediting and layout work for a couple of publications owned by the California media publishing group Orange County Register Communications. MORE

... but Greenslade says don't lose hope

Memo to journalists: don't be depressed by falling paper profits, the future is ours

I have attended four newspaper conferences in the past couple of months - in Italy, Australia, Sweden and Serbia - all of which have been dominated, in varying degrees, by concern about the immediate future. Some owners, managers and editors have been in denial, arguing that things are better than they appear.

In their view, newsprint is here to stay, though all have grasped that it cannot stand alone. Most have signed up to multi-platform journalism, though they generally see online as complementary rather than a viable replacement.

Others have been more rational, claiming that newsprint is on its way out. For them, it is only a matter of time before the online alternative replaces paper altogether. But they, like their less radical colleagues, tend to view the problem through the prism of commerce.

What exercises almost everyone connected to the newspaper industry - and industry is the key word here - is the belief that websites cannot generate anything like the revenue enjoyed by media companies throughout the last century (more properly, the last 60 years). They are cast down by their inability to "monetise the net".

Why the worry? Profits, of course. Online news sites will never generate the kind of money that has made newspaper ownership so lucrative. Corporate owners in Britain and the US - along with their investors - have revelled in achieving 30% plus profit margins in the past and cannot conceive of lower returns. The investors, ruthless and logical, are looking elsewhere for higher dividends. The owners are left with companies facing declining revenue amid a technological revolution they do not want and cannot control.

Meanwhile, many journalists who have grown used to the idea that their work is inextricably linked to profitable enterprises are scratching their heads. They cannot conceive of a journalism that is gradually freeing itself from the yoke of commerce. Without business, without profits, who will pay their wages? Who will fund the foreign assignments? Who will provide the resources for long-form investigative journalism?

ADVERTISING SLUMP HITS REGIONALS

Such journalistic anxiety is understandable, but it is no good wailing about it. We have to envisage a future with an entirely new business model based on smaller returns that will fund a small, high quality staff, probably serving niche markets. (The days of mass media may well be over). But we have to admit to ourselves first that things will never be as they were in the last millennium. MORE

What do you think?

'The sub-editing function is obsolete'

Comforting isn't it?

In deleting subs, CityAM is in good company: a 'paper in Peterborough or somewhere'

Is London's financial freesheet undermining journalism with crude cost cutting, or just becoming more efficient? Simon Evans meets its owners

'Managers need to take care of stressed staff, especially now," proclaimed an article in CityAM, the London freesheet, last week. Just days earlier, the company's management had served notice on all of its sub-editing workforce, its web editor, a reporter and two members of the sales team.

Hardly the stuff to boost morale but a necessary move in the current climate, Jens Torpe, the paper's co-founder, said on Wednesday. "I don't understand why people are so surprised," he says in a rather exasperated way. "A number of newspapers in the UK have been doing without subs for a long while."

Unfortunately, he scratches around to name any, save for a "paper in Peterborough or somewhere".

He rebuts the suggestion that the move, coming after nearly three years of a subbed and generally well-regarded CityAM, has been forced on the company because of a lack of cash in the credit crunch.

"I don't know how many hundreds of people have been made redundant at the Telegraph, but nobody says they are going under. It's absolutely ridiculous. When we launched, we gave the editor the authority to build his editorial staff. He did it, and within budget, in a very short space of time.

"In the last couple of months, we've looked at potential ways to make the company more efficient, and feedback from editorial was that we should put more resources into front-line writing journalists," he adds. "There is a limit to the resources we have. That was how the new model came about. We have done three days under the new regime now, so it can be done. I have every confidence and trust in our journalists."

Co-founder Lawson Mun-caster is rather brusquer: "The sub-editing function is obsolete. I believe writers can take responsibility for filing copy that is readable and correct with a headline." MORE

More job cuts ... but also from online

Have highlighted the interesting bits in bold ...

LA Times Cuts 250 Jobs; 150 Cuts in Editorial Include Online
Rafat Ali

The most troubled big newspaper in U.S. is cutting off 250 jobs, including an unprecedented 150 positions in editorial, to bring its expenses down in line with declining revenues.

The Los Angeles Times newspaper will also reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15%, it announced on a slow Wednesday prior to July 4th holiday week.

These cuts will be across all departments of The Times, including circulation, marketing and advertising; the company will have about 3,000 employees after the reductions.

This is among the biggest such cuts announced by any major market U.S. newspaper in recent history. The editorial cuts amount to roughly 17% of the 876 the company employs now, will be spread between the print newsroom and The Times’ online operations and are to be completed by Labor Day.

Times Editor Russ Stanton explained the paradox in a staff memo: “Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money.”

Also thanks to the Internet, the luxury of monopoly is gone too…

The cuts on the online side are a bit surprising, considering LATimes.com has been trying to build up its online operations with blogs, special vertical sections, search, video and other services. The Times will be combining its print and Web staffs into a single operation with a unified budget, and that perhaps explains some of the online cuts, to do away with the redundancies.

Recently the company said that LATimes.com expects to generate $25 million in display ad revenue this year, more than tripling the $6 million that area attracted three years ago.

From publisher David Hiller’s memo to staff, some plans for the future:

-- A re-designed flagship Los Angeles Times newspaper to debut in the fall, reflecting the work of the Reinvent team, the Spring Street Project, and related efforts underway for quite some time

-- A re-designed latimes.com website

-- A combined multimedia newsroom to produce excellent content for both

-- More targeted products for new audience segments

-- A re-organized sales team fired up to turn our revenue picture around

-- Increased utilization of our operating strengths so we can print and distribute newspapers and other products all across SoCal

The Tribune-owned paper has seen a lot of management turmoil over the last few years, and even since Sam Zell took over the company.

Announcements of hundreds of reductions were issued only last week by dailies other Tribune papers, Boston, San Jose, Detroit and elsewhere.