Ode to the sub-editor

Sub-editors are a dying breed thanks to the internet. There are all sorts of reasons given but the real reasons are these:

• Money
• Money
• erm... money

The truth is that the web is causing many publishers to re-evaluate their processes and when they stop to think about it, they cannot work out why they ever had subs. They are forced to rethink production for new media but while they are at it, they think, let's save some money.

In case you need reminding, here is what a sub-editor is for:

• Reduces the chances of your being sued
• Stops your writers looking like fools (when they cannot spell accommodate or get the name right of the person they spent four hours interviewing)
• Removes the waffle and pretensions that afflict all writers
• Sells the story (so people actually want to read it)

The change of medium does not dilute any of these reasons. In fact, since it is a vastly more competitive arena for information, the last of these is more important than ever.

One spurious reason increasingly cited for doing away with subs is that idea that somehow they get in the way of the real-time, dynamic dialogue that can exist between journalist and reader on the web. In its finest hour, the conversational tone of the web creates astonishing tendrils of communication.

But in practice, mostly what it does is encourage some perfectly good writers to become waffley and self-obsessed.

So let's hear it for a return to pith rather than taking the . . .