Watchdogs and copy editors

The article "Whoppers of 2009" emphasizes journalists' need to be extremely vigilant. I thought it was very interesting how many errors the article's writer found in President Barack Obama's speeches. You would think that the president would have someone, perhaps a speech writer, to fact-check his speeches. I don't understand how these mistakes made it all the way to press conferences without anyone catching the exaggerations and understatements. This reminds me of something Norm Lewis taught us in Editing last semester: The public is more willing to overlook a fact error than a misspelling or math miscalculation. If journalists fail to question our fellow writers and public speakers, who will?

This leads me to think of the article "Is the term 'copy editor' becoming obsolete?" Copy editors are required to do so many tasks these days that it's becoming a real challenge for them to catch fact errors. The article cites copy editors designing pages, uploading multimedia and generating story ideas, along with checking grammar, spelling and numbers. I think that the world does need more copy editors. However, it needs more people acting as watchdogs, too. As an editor at my college's unofficial paper, it pains me to have to double-check everything my writers write because I don't trust their reporting. I shouldn't have to look up every proper noun in a story, but I do. I shouldn't have to call sources, but I do. I shouldn't have to call my writers for more crucial information, but I do.

Copy editors are needed. Watchdogs are needed. Better reporters are needed.