A few days ago I was asked by The Jobless Journalist about the merging of reporting and subbing in an online environment… and should s/he as a reporter (with some subbing experience) apply for sub-editing roles.
Well, the digital skills gap has been a source of frustration for me for a few months now so I’m afraid the subject rather got me going… it’s very much from a client publishing perspective rather than a multimedia newsroom but here’s the transcript.
And if you don’t want to read 1200 words on future-subbing, then the short version is nicely SEO’d into the header above.
Do you see the divide between reporter and sub lessening with online journalism, ie a reporter needs to be able to sub as content is uploaded directly online?
Firstly, good on you for blogging about this. Not only are you engaging a load of other journalists who are probably pretty damn worried about their trade and their future, but you are opening up many more potential job opportunities for yourself by engaging in the culture of online and learning the skills of digital publishing.
Oh and unless someone’s radically altering your post and headlines, you’re already both reporting and subbing, yes?
Right now, you’re working out for yourself what works in this environment copywise, headlinewise, structurewise. In blogging at least, reporting and subbing tend to be integrated (along with photography, IT skills and social media basics).
Which kind of answers your question on the divide between reporter and sub in online environments. Divide? What divide?
The divide is less about reporting versus subbing, imho, and more about are you engaged or not, are you digitally included or not.
By not engaging more in online environments, traditional journalists are not developing their digital writing or subbing skills, let alone all the other skills that go with publishing to the Web, like:
- picture research under Creative Commons licences
- image manipulation
- linking skills
- SEO knowledge
- how to upload and promote content
- and the big one: the ability to deal with readers talking back to you.
It is an ongoing frustration in my line of work – currently web editor/corporate blogger – that people say they want to work online but don’t have a blog, Twitter account, Tumblr or Posterous, and don’t use feeds, social bookmarking, alerts and other tools to help them be a journalist online.
It’s like trying to write a news story but only occasionally reading a newspaper. Just having a Facebook page isn’t enough, because your readers online will know more than you – and they’ll let you know it.
I came across a great quote to illustrate this in the Top 10 Lies Newspaper Execs are Telling Themselves:
Until you have a blog, a Twitter feed and a Facebook account and until you are reading most of your news online and commenting on what you read, until you are all over Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, iGoogle, Netvibes and the like, until you can actually explain to me how online CPM-based advertising works, until you can explain how SEO and SEM work, until you know what “pwnd” means, until you know the significance of the 3 Wolf Moon or 3 Cat Keyboard t-shirt, you don’t know what you don’t know.
You are competing with the very people who created the Internet. Increasingly, you are competing with the generation who grew up online. How can you possibly be so arrogant that you think you can compete in that world without becoming a part of it?
I’ve been actively looking to hire digital subs and SEO-trained writers in the last six months – but I’ve struggled to find people who are really digitally engaged. I sometimes wonder if it’s because journalists tend to rely on mammoth publishing organisations for training. They are not used to going out there and training themselves. (This is where freelances have an advantage – we are used to self-development because it’s a generous publisher who will pay for our training.)
This presents great opportunities for reporters and subs who are looking for online work because in online publishing there is no set path in… at least for the moment while universities get to grips with how to train up the journalists of the future and those who are traditional print journalists move from shock at their industry collapsing either to engaging with the new medium or perhaps, resentfully, having it foisted upon them on top of their usual work.
No one can prescribe you a way into a job in online journalism. No one is asking you to train as a reporter first and perhaps later, when you’ve learnt how to write in a certain style, then train as a sub. There is no discrete set of jobs in online publishing – unless you count the way the digital dept I work for is divided: web editor, developer, designer with a side order of subs who process print stuff easily but need to [find the time to] engage [in online culture] in order to ‘get’ online.
From what I’ve read (mostly on teh Online Journalism Blog – and, subs, you can stet that ‘teh’ – it’s an online thang), reporters in multimedia newsrooms are being asked to sub their own work; meanwhile subs are being made redundant. How reporters are supposed to sub to old-school standards, perhaps with minimal experience or training, and 24-hour newsroom deadline pressures, should be interesting! Would love to be a fly on the wall of the 21st century newsroom. But just on a practical level, I know I find it hard to sub my own work, and I know I’m not alone in that.
Then again, online environments are a different beast. It’s publish first, refine later. You may not be shot for a typo but you do need to know the pitfalls – particularly if you are working for a brand – and this is perfect sub-editor territory.
Does this herald the death of the sub or will there always be the need for a second pair of eyes?
Every bit of copy benefits from a second pair of eyes, imho. But the comments section can act as a rather more public second set of eyes, pointing out your typos and incorrect facts. In a way this is more transparent but it has its downsides.
Personally, I’d love a sub to come along and clean up my typos, SEO my copy for me, add metadata to my content, suggest a better mobile-phone-surfer-headline, keep me out of court then social bookmark my content in relevant places and ways. In practice, this rarely happens – mainly due to the current digital skills gap.
How does freelance subbing compare with a full-time subbing job. Which is easier to get into?
You’re asking the wrong person here as a dedicated freelancer. Freelance subbing is the same for me as full-time subbing except you occasionally have to put up with the ‘just a freelance’ mentality of some employers, and you have to work the British summer as it’s peak time to cover holidays. The pay off is you can (potentially) take months off at a time to travel, write your novel, start a blog… 
Easier to get into? Hard to say. The last year has been a difficult one for freelance subs definitely, although there seem to be a few green shoots of recovery around now. All I can say is, it takes balls and bluff to go straight into freelance subbing without having done a full-time stint somewhere first. And that budgets are moving online.
In which case, the ‘jobless journalist’, who’s done a year’s subbing already, and is now visibly blogging for all the world to see, is perfectly positioned for hire.
Good luck with the job search. I suspect and hope you won’t just be blogging for long.
LATE ADD: I left my job last week to go freelance as a blogger and do more social media and content strategy ’stuff’. Sooo…. my agency is looking for web editors – check out the job advert if you’re interested. And if you’re a freelance sub/writer with a blog, Twitter account and a general immersion in online, then it may be worth sticking in a CV or a link to your site, too.
Wrestling with online tone and etiquette
October 20, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Being sort-of-flamed in a forum a while ago was a wake-up call to getting the tone of online writing right. It’s something I’m still working on and something subs, copy editors and writers moving into online work would do well to learn.
Because unless you’re actively writing for the Web – blogging, contributing to forums, commenting and so on – then the Web’s more natural, conversational tone and transparency won’t come easily. In fact, your writing may end up sticking out like an academic essay delivered on the radio.
I’m learning that one of the best things you can do to make a successful transition to online work is to take part in the culture of the Web – just as your readers do.
Writing a blog, making comments, joining a forum or discussion – these are all ways to join in and develop your online voice.
The problem for print journalists is that we’re used to operating in a vacuum. We’re used to telling the reader what to think in a one-way distribution of information that is forgotten as soon as it goes to press.
And too often, the reader has felt like a nameless, faceless entity summed up by market research as an ABC1 type.
Not so on the Web. Expect them to talk back and respond directly to the content you upload. And be ready for them to click through to you from Bratisalava or Boston as much as from Birmingham or Bognor. Cock it up or come across as superior (even if you are!) and you can expect a flaming for you and/or your brand.
Dan Gillmor (author of We The Media) says journalism is in the process of evolving from ‘journalism as lecture to journalism as conversation’. Which means…
Online editors need to be ready to engage at a grassroots level. We can now write in the second-person, ask direct questions, start debates and reply to commentors, critics and detractors.
Btw, don’t think having a site which with comments disabled lets you off – anything you publish can be linked to, commented on, blogged about or discussed openly for anyone to read, ad infinitum.
But get the tone right and the readers are more likely to buy into what you’re saying.
(For a commercial rationale on this, check out why being likeable online is an important business strategy. Being controversial brings in traffic but if you’re selling something it’s likeability that makes people want to buy.)
And if you do cock up? Don’t respond in anger. Be humble, be honest, apologise for getting it wrong, ask what they suggest doing and avoid tit-for-tat responses. People will usually forgive you for being an arse. Once anyway.
Categories: Comment · Tips & advice
Tagged: flaming, online copy editing, online etiquette, online sub-editing, tone