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From Rim Editor to Ram the Editor

By Roy Peter Clark

I'm feeling more than a bit xenophobic these days, and I'm blaming it on the movement to outsource newspaper copy editing services to India.

I was interviewed on this topic recently for a public radio program in New York City called "The Takeaway" with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji.

The conversation featured a 26-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.

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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 Dehli, which runs a copy editing service for clients across the world, including newspapers in the U.S. of A.

Dutta admitted that Indian copy editors were trained in "the Queen's English" and had to be schooled in the peculiarities of the American idiom. 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.

My recent radio rant went something like this (I've added a few points for good measure): I need copy editors to know that Eva Longoria is not the wife of Tampa Bay Rays baseball phenom Evan Longoria.  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. I need a Rhode Island copy editor to know that you don't dig for clams; you dig for quahogs, a word of Indian origin -- American Indian. I need copy editors who know that Jim Morrison of The Doors went to St. Pete Junior College, that beat writer Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Fla., but is buried in Lowell, Mass. I want them to know that Lakewood High School is different from Lakewood Ranch High School. I want them to know that 54th Avenue North in St. Petersburg is 108 blocks north of 54th Avenue South. 

I'd like to think that I'm a pretty bright guy, but, believe me, Mr. Dutta, you don't want me to copy edit the work of Indian journalists in New Dehli. National origin matters. Community matters. Culture matters.

My radio friend from India also recognizes that these things matter, but he assured Mr. Hockenberry that the copy editors from India, working with clients in Houston, are given a "learning module" to help them understand the local traditions. (I hope there will be a pop quiz on Enron, AstroTurf, and Billy "White Shoes" Johnson.)

No amount of book or online learning can compensate for wisdom earned on the ground. I need copy editors who are willing to be comrades and collaborative antagonists, who will drink beer with me after their shifts, who love this community as much as I love it, who know you can get great chili dogs at Coney Island and the best barbecue in town at Big Tim's.

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. I want to be able to walk up to a copy editor's desk and say "great catch, thanks for saving my ass." Must I now learn the Hindi word for ass?

My friend and colleague Howard Finberg, who once worked as a newspaper copy editor, has told me he views the erosion of the copy desk as a more troubling development than the loss of reporters and the retreat from some traditional beats. I think he's right.

When it comes to the outsourcing of this crucial journalistic function, at a time when we say we want the news to be even more local, let's take our stand -- at the border's edge. 

Full post as published by Writing Tools on July 21, 2008 (boomark / email).