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The copy editor's role in the newsroom, as the last set of eyes to read a story before it is published, is becoming obsolete, writes Lawrence Downes of the New York Times.

Copy editing was never a glamorous position, says Downes, but an invaluable one, requiring encyclopedic knowledge and an expert editorial eye.

"They [copy editors] are more powerful than proofreaders. They untangle twisted prose. They are surgeons, removing growths of error and irrelevance; they are minimalist chefs, straining fat," he writes.

But as newspapers place increased emphasis on their online operations, the scale of journalistic values is tipping. In order to compete in the online age of journalism, newspapers must publish stories in a hyper-timely manner. This rush to the press, however, may be compromising values such as quality and credibility - virtues of the copy editor.

"The job hasn't disappeared yet, but it is swiftly evolving, away from an emphasis on style and consistency, from making a physical object perfect the first time. The path to excellence is now through speed, agility and creativity in using multiple expressive outlets for information in all its shapes and sounds.

"But in that world of the perpetual present tense - post it now, fix it later, update constantly - old-time, persnickety editing may be a luxury in which only a few large news operations will indulge," Downes writes.

For Downes, the copy editor is a foreseeable casualty of journalism's shift to the digital era. It would be easy to mistake the tone of his conclusion - if copy editors vanish, "no one is going to notice" - for cynical; but it's more wistful than anything else. As journalism evolves, copy editors are becoming relics of a past age.

"It [copy editing] will be an artisanal product, like monastery honey and wooden yachts," Downes writes. "It would be nice, at least, to thank the copy editors on the way out."

Source: New York Times

Website traffic is measured by several factors: page views, unique visitors, time spent on a page, etc., but David Cohn of Columbia Journalism Review writes that there is no precise way to calculate web readership or traffic.

Cohn asks: Why would advertisers choose a news site over one like Google, which obviously garners thousands of viewers, if there is no accurate way to measure web traffic? And how can they agree on rates?

"This may be the most measurable medium in history, but the measurements all suck," says Steve Yelvington, an Internet strategist for Morris DigitalWorks, which manages websites for more than sixty newspapers and thirty radio stations.

Most publishers know their statistics through census data from web servers that count how many times a site is visited. However, the data includes "bots" and "spiders" that search engines send out to index content for searchers, and they inflate the number of visitors counted by internal servers, mostly because of "cookie deletion." Cookies allow a page to recognize a viewer, so unique visitors can be counted. But with users constantly emptying their cookies, a site's traffic can be increased by 150%, according to Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at comScore Inc., a global Internet information provider. Essentially, 10 million viewers is probably closer to 4 million.

Organizations such as comScore and Nielsen/NetRatings will share traffic numbers within a plus-or-minus 2% error margin from panelists of randomly selected sites who agree to be monitored. Cohn writes that these sample-based numbers can underreport, especially since these panels don't account for international traffic or traffic from work computers.

Though the panel and census system aren't perfect, publishers and advertisers can make relative comparisons within their market with the two.

George Ivie, executive director and CEO of the Media Ratings Council (MRC), wants to reconcile the two systems with his not-for-profit trade association. The council began with TV and radio audience size, but turned its attention to the Internet in 2002 and wrote standards for audience census data, including page views, clicks on a page, and time spent on a site, all new measurements with the Internet.

MRC requires news organizations that want their traffic counts to be approved by the ratings council to adopt the council's standards, such as counting only content that is accessed through an end browser.

Only a few organizations have been audited by MRC, such as Yahoo, msn, and AOL and advertisers like Atlas and Doubleclick, giving them an advantage when negotiating advertising rates, according to Cohn.

In 2006, MRC began auditing comScore and Nielsen/ NetRatings. Nielsen/Net-Ratings had decided that time spent on a site was more important than total Web page views because visitors spend more time on a page when watching videos and new programs allow visitors to interact with a page (like voting in a poll) without having to reload an entirely new page. But, having a window open does not necessarily mean that the visitor is engaged the whole time, thus this measurement is also inaccurate.

Because the Internet is always changing, there may be new metrics in the future to retrieve more accurate statistics.

Source: CJR

Eight Brazilian newspapers, all part of the RBS media group, are collaborating on the "Error Prevention Project," devising a so-called "accuracy packet" that will help them identify and avoid their most frequent errors.

The packet begins with a handbook made by Zero Hora editor Pedro Dias Lopes, and follows with suggestions and practices from American and Brazilian professionals.  

Primary features of the Prevention Project include:

-an online database where participating publications submit and explain each correction they have made.

-an internal awareness campaign urging employees to check for the five most frequent types of errors (53% of all errors), including names, and personal data like professions and age.

-a Manual of Procedures and Error Prevention, the title of Lopes' handbook, which offers advice on how to best write various types of articles, including obituaries.

Lopes began tracking errors in 2004, and thanks in part to the strength of the handbook, he was named executive editor of zerohora.com. After Zero Hora's correction records were put online, and the other publications in the project, such as Poineiro, followed suit. Analysis showed that the top five errors across all the papers were identical to the top five first identified at Zero Hora.

Source: Poynter

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Journalism students, as well as seasoned print journalists, should learn the differences between online newswriting and print newswriting. Here’s how to teach journalists about new publishing formats on the Web, particular attention to headline writing, and how to be reactive.

Dozens of readers have reacted angrily after the Parade magazine published, as an insert in numerous newspapers, a “seriously outdated cover story” and interview of Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, 10 days after her assassination, wrote Chicago Tribune’s public editor Timothy McNulty.

In his Regret The Error blog, Canadian freelancer Craig Silverman comes back on some of the media’s most noticed mistakes during 2007: among the top were mistakes about US politician Barack Obama, but also a Titanic picture rip-off that went around the world before being caught.

The reinvention of the San Jose Mercury News is still moving along with its plans for a smaller and very different product. However, some staffers and readers are concerned with the fact that "the very top of the organization is saying, blow up the newsroom," says Chris O'Brien, a reporter for the Mercury.

The Sunday Sport wrongly published a picture of a woman, using her picture to compliment an article about a woman given as Asbo for excessively noisy sex. The photo was of Jessica Lewis, who has no connection with the woman in the article and has never been given an Asbo.

Newspaper online ad growth in the US has been about 30-40% per year recently. However, in 2007, online advertising fell to about 20% in the first half and slowed even more in the third quarter.

Guardian America was launched, featuring among other things an exclusive interview with Hillary Clinton. The British paper hopes to secure an even bigger share of its significant US-based audience.

Paul Steiger, long-time top editor of The Wall Street Journal, is to assemble a group of investigative journalists, who will offer their work to news outlets. An all-new way of doing journalism, which will be driven by trial and error.

In an excellent article, Editor & Publisher’s (E&P) Joe Strupp gathers 12 important lessons learned from online flops and failures, such as… 

The new Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) report showed the newspaper industry in a period of experimentation with paid electronic editions. Some of the biggest metro papers, the same ones with thriving websites, sell far fewer electronic editions than mid-sized dailies. For now, print circulation and paid electronic circulation seem unrelated.