MarCom Professional

Journos to sub own copy

London's freesheet City AM, a newspaper of 100,000 aimed at workers in financial services, is to dispense with the services of its entire sub-editing team.

A spokesman for City AM said "In assessing the editorial capacity and based on similar experiences in Europe, City AM is undertaking a reorganisation that will see it move away from a combined editorial and subeditorial model to focus on frontline journalism."

Replace 'frontline' with 'cost-cutting' and I think you get a better picture of the publication's position.

This is another sign of bloggers and journalists becoming increasingly similar in the way they work. Indeed, Roy Greenslade of The Guardian, commented "In future, writers will sub their own copy. This is how it will be on every paper one day - before there are no papers." But will this lead to a decrease in quality from traditional publications?

Most journalists, if not all, would have gone through some sort of formal training with a required minimum of language skills and so do a good job of effectively subbing themselves before they hand their work into the subs desk. Most bloggers sub their own copy and in most cases do a good job of it. In both cases, most people take pride in their work and writing, and so will want to make sure that their writing is error free before formally publishing it.

This is where bloggers have the upper hand. There is no formal publishing schedule. If they publish something which has an error in it, they can always update the content as soon as the error is spotted. And as they are subbing their own copy all the time at the moment, they will be more use to the future changes that journalism brings.

Greenslade hits the point on the head when he says "this is how it will be on every paper one day - before there are no papers." Perhaps that time isn't too far around the corner.

Also posted on puddingrelations.blogspot.com