Editors Are the New Dodos

The holiday television slump is rapidly coming to an end. Hello Project Runway, American Idol, and Men of a Certain Age! And even if you hate award shows (no reason why you shouldn’t) I beseech you to tune in to The Golden Globe Awards for a few minutes this Sunday, because it will likely be the most hilarious and uncomfortable night TV will see for a long time.  Finally, Ricky Gervais was hired to host an award show. Ricky has been a presenter on various award shows and is always the highlight of the night–most times the only bright spot in an otherwise self-congratulatory quagmire. Because he’s likely to unabashedly skewer the celebrities, this may be a one-time hosting gig. 24 also returns Sunday night (yippee), but that first hour of prime time will be Ricky time.

The bitter cold and January blahs have forced me to consider employment.  As I began checking online job boards, I came across this little gem: “Must be profient and have great english skills. Can check other writers spelling and grammer.”  The need for an editor is clearly urgent, but how can the person who wrote this ad possibly appreciate me? This is the quandary many editors face. If I respond to that ad with the corrected version, will it prove my worthiness or make me seem like an ass? I’m guessing the latter. Or are they perhaps testing me to see if I catch all of the errors in the ad? Doubtful.

Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more grammatical and spelling errors in every medium. Is editing going the way of the dodo? A friend and I have taken to mailing each other appalling mistakes in mainstream advertisements. In the case of editing, it’s more than a bad economy that makes editors seem dispensable. We don’t directly affect the bottom line–at least not visibly.  Editors are often seen as nonessential employees until an embarrassing error gets through. It’s always been my experience that those who don’t think they need an editor, in fact, do, and those who invite editing into their writing are usually the careful, intelligent people who barely do. Everyone needs an editor.

I’ve also been noticing the laziness (or absence) of headline writers. Not only are there misspellings in them, which is unforgivable due to font size, but they are increasingly weak. For example, last weekend, I couldn’t wait to see what the local paper, The Columbus Dispatch, did with the sports section headline. The Buckeyes won the Rose Bowl, after all. I was quickly deflated with some headline about a “rosy future.” Where’s the fun in that? The Bucks played the Ducks for God’s sake. The team names rhyme. That’s an editor’s dream! Sometimes the obvious choice is the correct one.

I don’t think it’s impossible to find a place where editing is valued.  Over the course of my career I’ve had several bosses who embraced quality and valued the editorial process. They wanted clients to see the company’s commitment to professional-looking products and the professionalism of the company itself.  Is that still a thing?  Apparently, due to a 2007 archaeological find, the dodo may be resurrected. It would require painstakingly extracting and decoding DNA, but it’s possible. Resurrecting the editor may not be as simple.