Well, I have to weigh in on the who-edits-the-blogs affair; after all the world wants to know what the editor’s blog blogmeister thinks, right?
I’ll draw an analogy: Ed Gilmore, my stepfather, worked for 30 years as a corporate jet mechanic bound by the strict rules of the FAA and the ironclad laws of gravity — which meant that on the job he had to stick to the highest standards of professionalism. Lives really were on the line.
He also is an excellent shade-tree mechanic (we once pulled the transmission out of my ’65 Falcon and had it back in place in less than an hour). Now, do you imagine that Ed makes sure every repair he does out back in the garage can pass an FAA-style inspection? Hardly: he’s good but doesn’t need to be that good. And besides, the bosses aren’t keeping score, so he can fix his cars to whatever standard he feels is appropriate to his knowledge, skill and available time.
The scores of bloggers whining about the Wientraub affair in Sacramento, in which it was deemed not such a bad idea that he have an editor, are shade-tree newsies who figure the occasional typo or fact error is not such a big deal. After all, they get along fine blogging despite such problems.
But what’s happened to Weintraub is that he is being held to the professional standards of his employer. Thank God we have no FAA looking over us, but public lives do hang in the balance of what journalists do on the job, which means their work needs to be scrutinized by their colleagues.
Editors, pains in the ass though we may be, are the FAA inspectors of the news industry. As any of you have noticed from reading this blog, I don’t trouble myself to fix all my typos and grammatical abuses. But I sure wouldn’t let myself get away with this level of slovenliness at work. I’ve got too much rent to pay.
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