Copy editors can help by changing their work flow

Great comment from Sean Polay that deserves greater visibility as it’s own post:

Here’s the other necessary step I think is required for wholesale change, both to improve our products and to streamline the work flow:

Our copy desks and night news editors == with the help of a reporter or two — should start their shifts by reading the Web site. Then based on their own intuition and news judgement, combined with the behavior of our readers (most commented stories, most viewed stories, most viewed slideshows, etc.) build a newspaper — daily or weekly — that contains the best of that day’s Web output.

And do not shovel it back online at the end of the night. Start each day anew on the Web, with a heavy dose of links back to original stories or ongoing series of stories (aggregated on landing pages) should you be working on a follow-up.

Serve the audience. Respond to the audience. Engage the audience. If ALL of our products are not doing that, then we are doomed.

1 thought on “Copy editors can help by changing their work flow

  1. I really like the idea of aggregating the previous stories and linking back to them. That’s something our site producers have been working with our newspapers on. Inter-linking between related stories is incredibly important. Not just for SEO, but for guiding the reader through content. Nice highlighting of Polay’s comment.

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