Outsourcing, "suspected terrorists" and copy editor salaries

Doug Fisher has been en fuego lately at Common Sense Journalism.

First, read his take on the fears of copy editing being outsourced.

Copy editors need to start promoting their "brand" a lot more heavily and what they can bring to any publication. Too often, however, they revel in their anonymity. That will not serve them well. ... Copy editors are likely to find their jobs changing radically in the next decade, yet their core principles need not, and should not. To survive, they must be able to distinguish the two and accommodate those changes while promoting themselves as a value proposition, not a cost center.

Then check out his reminder that a "suspected terrorist" is different than a "terrorism suspect." It may seem a subtle difference, but ignoring it is sloppy.

Finally, look at the mention of the Toledo Blade's ad disclosing some employee salaries: The "top scale salary" (what exactly does that mean?) for a copy editor is $59,561. Compare that with the top minimum pay for reporters at the Blade in 2003: $54,704. (I'm not entirely sure that "top scale salary" and "top minimum pay" are comparable, but I suspect they are. If so, that would be the least amount the paper would pay an experienced copy editor.)