Bagpipes for the copy desk

(A quick reminder: Take a minute to contribute to my latest reader project, Ornamentation. And there's a new poll over to the right... pick your most annoying person of 2010. Probably should've been a longer list.)

Copy editors are the umpires of the newsroom -- they've done a great job if you barely notice they've been there.

Most everything that goes into our paper is edited at least twice. The first editor is what we call a "line" editor -- usually the reporter's boss. The second layer is the copy editor. The copy editor usually writes the headline, and always does the fine-tooth-comb editing to make sure street names are spelled right, dates match up, we're not saying DUI when we mean DWI. Copy editors know more about the city, state, region and world than anyone else in the newsroom. Copy editors have saved me so many times I lost count long ago. All reporters make mistakes -- it's inevitable on a constant deadline -- but a good copy editor is an All-Star catcher, snagging every wild pitch.

See, that's two baseball metaphors already. A copy editor would say we should cut it to one.

I say all this to set up this video from the Winston-Salem Journal. As newsrooms (like a lot of other businesses) have cut staff, copy editors at many papers -- including the Observer -- have taken the hardest hit. (Full disclosure: My wife works on our copy desk, which we call the universal desk -- our folks also design and lay out pages.)

Last Friday was to be the last day of work for the 18 people on the Journal's copy desk. So they brought in the funeral pipes.



As you see from the video, the reality in Winston-Salem turned out to be more complicated. The reality is complicated these days for every newspaper -- and every other business trying to survive and thrive in these strange times. That's not news anymore, I guess.

Mainly I just wanted to let you know about the greatness of copy editors. We don't notice them much. They deserve to be noticed.