JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

“Copy editors are the last set of eyes before yours. They are more powerful than proofreaders. They untangle twisted prose. They are surgeons, removing growths of error and irrelevance; they are minimalist chefs, straining fat. Their goal is to make sure that the day’s work of a newspaper staff becomes an object of lasting beauty and excellence once it hits the presses. . .The copy editor’s job, to the extent possible under deadline, is to slow down, think things through, do the math and ask the irritating question. His or her main creative outlet, writing clever headlines, is problematic online, because allusive wordplay doesn’t necessarily generate Google hits.” In a Changing World of News, An Elegy for Copy Editors by Lawrence Downes, NYT.  

Thanks to the fabulous Stella for the link. We’re the two newspaper cynics (Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday is my model; if only I could find a hat to fit my giant head)  you see sitting in cafes having large, stiff drinks, bemoaning how everything’s gotten dumber. The world needs more ruthless, hardcore, steel trap-brain editors, it just doesn’t know it yet.