Reading Nouriel Roubini’s latest frightening missive I noticed that he doesn’t care about clean copy either.
(Yes I know this is a trivial thing to concentrate on when he’s talking about market shutdowns and saying global equities still have a further 30% to fall on fundamentals alone. But this blog is about news media).
But when actual content is so seriously devalued that advertisers will pay next to nothing to be associated with much of it, who can afford luxuries like subbing and design?
Perhaps if I was more enterprising I’d setup some service offering rapid-fire subbing for those readers who value it enough to pay for it.
Editing is a different matter, to me at least – without editing you have no unifying concept for all the content in your newspaper/programme/blog/gutenberg-era zine. Without editing you have no product.
Note: I am not in favour of newspapers getting rid of subs (and I am particularly in awe those who can write good headlines to fit). I am not in favour of getting rid of any newspaper staff, librarians included. But it’s a cruel and low-margin world we live in.
