editing @ 23 Oct 2006 01:47 pm by bigfish
There’s all this talk about the blogosphere overtaking – if not supplanting – mainstream media (that’s MSM, to those of you who only speak in acronyms). To which I say, hooey! First off, have you noticed that most blog posts simply point to an article on an MSM website and then offer the blogger’s response and commentary? Heck, you can see that approach in action right here on the “More Stuff, Less Fluff†blog. There’s nothing wrong with it. Not everyone reads the Wall Street Journal, the NY Times or the West Jabip Bugler, but maybe they’ll be turned on to those publications/sites after finding a link on their favorite blog. This is all good. And, speaking for myself, I often find myself wanting to spout off about some article I’ve read in the paper or online, and a blog gives me a place to do it. It’s cheap therapy. And if someone happens to read my blog, it’s group therapy.
Now, I could also go off on a rant about how bloggers aren’t out there doing a real journalist’s job, but I work for a book publisher, not a news organization. What I do want to point out is that most bloggers don’t have editors, and this is an important part of the picture that can get overlooked when comparing blogs to established content providers. Many will say the absence of editors gives the blog reader an unvarnished, honest view that MSM can’t. What it also gives you is a lot of unintelligible nonsense. No matter how popular and populated the blogosphere becomes, the world will always need editors (if not, I’ll be standing in a bread line soon). The ability to punch letters on a keyboard doesn’t make you a writer. Besides needing copy editors to clean up incorrect punctuation, bad grammar, misspellings and poor language, most writers benefit from having an editor to help organize their thoughts and present them in a usable format. Information that can’t be easily digested isn’t of much value, and the best ideas can be lost in a poorly constructed paragraph. Not to mention the fact that sometimes, even the best writers need an outsider’s eyes as a reality check for what they’ve written.
That’s one reason why book publishers won’t disappear. Even computer book publishers. Sure, you can use Google to find a quick answer to a tech issue, visit an online forum to find others discussing the same topic, or consult a blogger who’s passionate on the subject. What you can’t always verify on the Internet is the background and possible bias of the person supplying the information. Many bloggers talk a good game but don’t really know much beyond their limited worldviews. Many blogs are skillfully disguised corporate mouthpieces. And many forum participants are full of baloney, knowingly or innocently so. Go visit Slashdot, choose any article and see if the comments offer a clear perspective on any issue. Half the time, they raise more questions than they answer, and you have no idea who these crackpots are anyway.
With a publisher like No Starch Press, you know you are getting expertise that’s gone through a developmental editor and a tech reviewer, at the very minimum. Then it’s run past a copy editor, so you won’t have to puzzle through bad English to get the gist of the author’s point. The manuscript is also gone over by a proofreader and our in-house production staff, and throughout this process, it’s shuttled back and forth with the author for further refinement. Most of our authors aren’t writers, they are tech geeks, like our readers. They have valuable knowledge to impart, but they need us to help get it into working order. We make sure our books contain correct information, but we also make sure they read well, have personality and even entertain. If you like one of our books, chances are you’ll feel confident to check out another and another – because we’ve proven ourselves to be a reliable source of well-packaged information. Sort of like the NY Times. The thing about book editors is that, when the final product is really good, no one gives us a second thought. But we don’t mind. It’s like the lighting in a movie – who notices unless it’s really bad?
