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The Public Editor

A Hard Look at Times Editing in the Digital Era

Editors in the third-floor newsroom, at 229 West 43rd Street offices, May 17, 1960.Credit...The New York Times Company Archives

THE NEW YORK TIMES has a reputation for impeccable editing. Not just because it can turn one particular story into a showpiece, but because it achieves a high level of consistency and polish across its entire report. It’s part of what readers pay for, and what they’ve come to expect.

Its editing architecture, originally constructed in the bountiful days of print, allows for multiple layers of editing that help keep copy clean and errors to a minimum. Except for breaking news, most stories are reviewed by three editors, with up to six or more if the article is headed for home page prominence or A1.

Soon this conveyor will be replaced by a bespoke editing system built primarily around digital. The specifics of how it will work are not final, but it is aimed at answering questions like: What is the maximum speed at which a story should travel from a reporter to the website? What is the minimum number of editors who should see it? What role should reporters play in taking ownership of their story and its presentation to readers, including photos, video and embedded tweets? And how can these changes be made to maximize the power and presence of visuals throughout The Times’s report?

This shift will be among the most significant the newsroom undergoes this year. Not only is the leadership overhauling the critical infrastructure that welds together the journalism, it is also likely to make sizable cuts in the editing ranks. The idea is to achieve this by extinguishing the one-size-fits-all approach to stories, and by defining most everyone’s role differently.

“It will be a change in the way we produce journalism,” said the managing editor, Joe Kahn, who is leading the process. “There will be a period of experimentation, but we won’t put the place at risk.”

For readers unschooled in the workings of newsrooms, editors come in different varieties.

When a reporter turns in a story, it first goes to what’s called a backfielder. They assign stories and do the most significant edit on them: reframing, possibly rewriting, identifying holes, reviewing sources, questioning facts. Next the story goes to a copy editor, where a new set of eyes looks at the story, especially mindful of spelling, grammar, clarity and proper use of the Times Stylebook (how to render words in foreign languages, for example) or anything that seems askew. Copy editors here also write the headlines, though that is already changing. At some point in this process a photo editor chooses the best image for the article.

Next comes the so-called slot, the head of the copy desk, who gives the story a quick read, maybe improving upon the headline and serving as air traffic control for all that is landing and taking off. For a small aircraft — a routine story without complications — this may be the end of the line. But a Boeing 747 might attract the eyes of someone from the News Desk, or the head of the Foreign section, for example. And it may well get a read by the masthead — the top editors — a word used by those lower down the chain with equal parts reverence and fatigue.

Right now, there are more editors in the newsroom than reporters, photographers and other journalists in the field. When a major report mapping The Times’s future was released last month, it referred to “low-value line-editing” and asserted that too much of what editors are doing is unnecessary. Said one unnamed journalist quoted in the report: “Every story feels like a fire hydrant — it gets passed from dog to dog, and no one can let it go by without changing a few words.”

The question is no longer whether the editing ranks will be squeezed. It is: How will it happen, when will it happen and how many positions will be lost?

The answers are being hashed out by a team of top editors who have made a science of watching the flight path of journalism as it wends through the system. The current approach seems destined to go, and there are several models that might replace it.

One calls for a single editor to be the “owner” of each story. That person would decide what path the story goes down. It could be edited, with another colleague giving it a quick read. Or after the first edit, it could be sent off for another thorough layer of editing. Another scenario would have one team of editors who work closely with reporters and either edit the story or send it to a “universal desk,” where different editors would grab it.

Both systems would allow for more triage of breaking stories and fewer bottlenecks. They would also have in common a reduction in the editing staff, the need for significant training — and a dramatic cultural shift.

That last factor can be already felt in the newsroom, even before the changes are announced. Among copy editors and backfielders, the sentiments run from anxiety about their future to resentment over their perceived worth. The phrase in the report referring to “low-value editing” has prompted a gallows humor on the desk: When someone catches a mistake in a story, they ask colleagues, “Was that a low-value change?”

Anyone who has worked in a newsroom has a story of a copy editor saving them from embarrassment, or worse. One editor told me of a recent feature that landed on the copy desk meant to show the mood of the country through 11 portraits. Ten of the 11 were men; it took a copy editor to point that out and get it changed.

Many also complain that the copy desk is down almost 20 percent because of buyouts and in-house staff moves. Some also note that it was just re-engineered so breaking news can move at a faster pace. And now something else?

Newsrooms require change — those that don’t evolve won’t make it to the next round. And I believe The Times is wise to engage in a complete rethink of its editing desk, making sure it caters to the form the company’s future depends on, not the one in sharp descent.

But tearing down one of the industry’s more-heralded editing desks holds inherent risk. The world places a higher value on speed than it once did, but what if that leads to more corrections? If the news report is too sloppy, how will adjustments be made, particularly with a smaller staff? Few issues produce more reader complaints than simple mistakes that could have been avoided.

As newsroom leadership moves forward, I hope it will do so with readers in mind and with wisdom gleaned from listening to the ranks of editors who know the system best. Some of those editors may be resistant to change, but they also know where the risks lie.

If this new model works, readers will never notice. If it doesn’t, they will be the most important check on the system.

Follow the public editor on Twitter @spaydl and reach her by email at public@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SR, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Readying The Times for Editing 3.0. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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