Merrill Perlman, above left, until a few days ago was chief of copy desks at The New York Times. She also has worked tirelessly as a recruiter of top journalism talent as well as a teacher and news room trainer. She has just retired from The Times to start her own consulting business which, in part, will include The Times. She is widely known as an editor’s editor. Her comments follow:

Photo by Eba Hamid of Hampton University, a DJNF/Temple editing intern at The New York Times. Also pictured is Peter de Montmollin of Syrcause University, another DJNF/Temple editing intern at The New York Times.

The drumbeats keep getting louder. Who needs copy editors? They just
get in the way. Without them, blog postings can go up faster; without
them, readers get a writer’s words unfiltered; without them, a
publication can save lots of money.

Copy editors have been hit hard by the buyouts and layoffs in our
industry in recent years. As recently as five years ago, the New York
Times virtually banned any copy editors from taking buyouts; in the
most recent downsizing, about a dozen were lost, more than in almost
any other department. Lawrence Downes, a Times editorial board
member and a Temple Dow Jones alum, recently wrote that the Newseum
had no display on copy editors, and predicted that when the last copy
editor disappeared, no one would notice. More recently, the Orange
County Register announced that it would outsource some of its copy
editing to India, in a month-long experiment.

So is it over? Should anyone thinking about a career as a copy editor
just pack it in?

No.

Editors will always be needed. Because copy editors act as the
reader’s representative, writers need them to make sure the message
is being delivered the way the writer intended. Yes, copy editors
have to do other things as well, including posting Web pages, but woe
to the writers or publications that ignore the disinterested,
unbiased eyes that copy editors bring. Credibility is all important
to the success of any publication, and, among other things, copy
editors protect their credibility.

“No newspaper is better than its copy desks. A copy reader is the
final guardian of the news columns against careless, inaccurate or
biased reporting. He must check and verify doubtful statements; watch
out for discrepancies; cut out anything that might be libelous or in
bad taste; sometimes revamp the organization or the sentence
structure of a badly written story.”

That was from a 1945 New York Times brochure, “News: The Story of How
It Is Gathered and Printed.” Ignore the inherent sexism and the lack
of technological diversity, and the basic message is as true today as
it was then. No news publication — or book, or blog posting, or
community newsletter — should sacrifice that level of protection.

So how do we persuade them of that? By doing our jobs,
professionally, without whining, but making sure we point out what
we’ve kept from the readers. Not the routine fly balls, unless
they’re by the same hitters, but those great catches that would have
embarrassed the writer and the publication. And by hoping that the
tide will turn, and more people will come to their senses and
realize the value a good copy editor brings. When news publications
start resembling bad restaurant menus — “Our’s is housemaid,” I
actually read on one — it’s too late.