The conversation featured a year-old American copy editor, Hayden Simms, whose bright eyes and bushy tail could not protect him from a Miami Herald pink slip. The premise of the program was that Simms lost his copy editing job to India and its pool of cheaper labor. On the line with me was Harsh Dutta, a gracious and highly intelligent man from India and co-founder of Content Writing India in New Delhi, which runs a copy editing service for clients across the world, including newspapers in the U.
I have no doubt that our copy editing colleagues in India have enough language competence to learn the difference between labor and labour and to put the comma inside quotations marks, thank you. Language, syntax, spelling and idioms are all important, but are beside the point.
It pains me to say that the bean counters who have proposed this move have added insult to the injury of being laid off. They seemed to have reduced the craft of copy editing to its most basic functions without attention to what will be lost, including cultural literacy, institutional memory and knowledge of the community.
I need them to know that a Florida cracker is not something you eat, and that it may or may not be offensive to some readers. Petersburg, Fla. I want them to know that 54th Avenue North in St. Petersburg is blocks north of 54th Avenue South. National origin matters. Community matters. Culture matters. My radio friend from India also recognizes that these things matter, but he assured Mr.
No amount of book or online learning can compensate for wisdom earned on the ground. I need copy editors who are more than comma catchers. I need them to be language masters, the last line of defense, the standard bearers of what my newspaper stands for, my safety net.
