In defense of editing

There was a point about seven or eight years ago when I realized that I would not end up working at a newspaper for my entire career. Within the past few years, I had a similar epiphany about being a journalist.

I've been a journalist, by anyone's definition, since January of 1993, when I started covering the men's basketball team for the student newspaper at Catholic University. I became the sports editor the next fall, then was No. 2 at the paper the next semester. Before graduation, I was hired as a part-time agate clerk for Baseball Weekly, and after a winter off, came back full time when the 1994 baseball work stoppage was settled.

I have always been an advocate for editing, even at a student newspaper, which was sometimes a tough sell. At Baseball Weekly I spent hours watching over Margaret McCahill's shoulder, learning even more about editing. I eventually became a copy editor, and grew to pick up a lot of other skills along the way, some related to journalism, others to project management, content strategy, social media and web analytics.

But even though journalism and editing are not as valued as they once were, I will always be an editor, deep down. And what has happened to editing over the past few years is troubling.

Proofreading is not a replacement for editing. And spell-check is not a replacement for proofreading.

Recently there was an insert into our church's weekly bulletin with a letter from the church school's principal. It contained an error, where a sentence read, "... with food, fellowship and games run by out 8th graders." I don't know how many eighth graders are out. Spell-check doesn't know the difference between out and our. We also received a newsletter from the Bloomington public schools with a typo in the very first sentence of the lead story, which was a letter from the superintendent of schools.

And these are our educators. It's difficult for me to accept this from people paid to educate our children, even though I know they are simple typos. It's the lack of attention and care paid to writing that's the issue. But it's not as bad as it could be. I see posts from some people who home-school their children which are also riddled with misspellings and I cringe.

There's a local online news outlet that consistently confuses its with it's. And said news outlet doesn't seem to read its Facebook feed's comments to see what people are saying about its coverage, which is a social media failure even if there weren't errors.

The irony hasn't escaped me that I am writing this defense of editing on a blog, which is one of the least-edited mediums there is. And I know that newspapers place less and less emphasis on editing with every round of layoffs. But editing is not a luxury. As Arthur Polotnik said, "You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke."

Everything can be edited: news copy, blog posts, emails, Facebook statuses, tweets, you name it. And if you're a company which interfaces with the public, you should hire me to do it.

Keeping my word chops up to date

I was pleased that Cate came up with a pretty good use for an old comforter that otherwise we would have gotten rid of, so I tried to give her a high five. She looked at me, puzzled, and said something to the order of, "I don't do high fives very well, you know."

I know this. I responded, "Just trying to bring you into the fold. Would a fist bump be better?"

I demonstrated a fist bump. She didn't seem enthused. So I said, "How about a forearm bash, you know, like Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire?"

I showed her how they did the forearm bash. She suggested that it might be painful, and responded, "They actually did that?"

I said, "Well, it was the '80s, so they were all hopped up on steroids."

Cate responded, "In that case, why didn't they just hug each other?"

I told her I thought Canseco and McGwire must not have been that testosterone-depleted.

Then I thought better of it. "Or that estrogenal." (Accent on the second syllable.) I walked away to go back to what I was doing, then turned around. "No. The word should be estrogenous." (Think of it rhyming with erogenous, or more to the point, androgynous.)

Cate actually laughed. A genuine, not mocking laugh.

Audition time

I've been preparing for almost a month for tonight's audition with the Bloomington Chorale. I didn't have to audition to get into the group, but there are many solo parts in this spring's concert series and I'm hopeful of getting at least one.

This has been a great experience. I heard the chorale sing in concert back in December and decided this would be a good outlet for me, since I was looking for something in addition to the church choir. This group, like most, has a very small tenor section. I'm one of four.

It turns out three of the four of us are auditioning tonight. There are about a dozen parts available. It's comforting to know I'm not the best in this group, not by a long shot, but it was suggested to me that I should audition anyway, as they can split the parts up.

I've been working pretty hard on two pieces and when I saw nobody was auditioning for a third one, I threw my name in just for the heck of it. I've been trying to take care of my voice as much as possible -- if you can picture just one drink on Super Bowl Sunday! I've had more tea to drink in the past 24 hours than beer.

And I'm a little nervous. The last time I had an audition I cared this much about, it was to get into the music school in college. And that was taped. This would be a little different, and if I'm fortunate enough to be given a piece, it'll mean for the first time that people are paying to attend a concert in which I am soloing.

Note that I didn't say people are paying to hear me solo. I'm not that foolish!

Now I'm just killing the last few minutes before leaving. I don't want to be late, but I suspect I'll be very early.