Northeast Ohio Media Group Vice President of Content Chris Quinn knows that Cleveland.com is littered with typos. That’s probably what you can expect when you impose quotas on your Northeast Ohio Media Group writers, ask them to publish their reports without a second set of eyeballs seeing it first, and get rid of all the copy editors.
But that doesn’t mean Quinn is happy. Nor the readers. Quite the contrary, as this memo from Quinn that recently went out shows. Kind of a typo tirade. He’s on the “warpath.” And though he’s proud of all the “high-minded pieces” that have run on the site (help us out here?), the number of errors is getting too damn high.
How can you, NEOMG reporter, fix this? He has some suggestions: Be more careful, for one. And if you need someone to read your stuff and pretend to be a copy editor, ask your significant other to look over your work. Seriously. Anyway, full memo below.
You all know how proud I am of the run we’ve had these last six-plus months. Each of you has contributed in too many ways to count, and our success is evident in the number of high-minded pieces we have done in news, sports, entertainment and opinion, the creativity we’ve shown in our approaches and the fun we’ve tried to have as we persuaded people to join us in the conversation.
All of that success, however, is being undermined, every day. And, like a foundation being destroyed by termites, it is being undermined by the tiniest of nuisances, the typo.
We hear from people about typos every day. They ask us why they should take us seriously if we can’t catch tiny spelling errors. They ask in the comments. They ask in letters. Sometimes they ask in a rage. And sometimes they ask as they cancel their print subscriptions, when our online typos make it into The Plain Dealer and the Suns.
It’s a genuine crisis, and it threatens our long-term success.
So I’m taking the drastic action of instituting a zero-tolerance policy for typos, starting Monday.
Some of you likely are rolling your eyes right now, and any regular reader of my e-mails knows I am no stranger to typos, but all of us simply must stop making them. When we began in August, I told each of you how important it is that we produce polished copy because we no longer have the same level of editing that we had in the past. It’s time to re-dedicate ourselves.
This also is about taking pride in what we do. We have a basic deal with the people who read our work, and the deal is that we spell correctly and use proper grammar. Anything less is unacceptable.
So, starting Monday, you’re going to hear from me every time a typo makes it into your copy. Yeah, I know. Seems like overkill, but that should tell you how serious this is.
How can you avoid typos?
I suggest that when you finish your posts, you add an extra reading just to scan every character. And do it in the blog software, not in Word. Many of the typos are in headlines and cutlines, and I suspect the reason is that you paste in your post from Word and then dash off cutlines and headlines in Movable Type.
Even better, ask a colleague to read your stuff before you post it. Or your spouse. Or your significant other. I can’t tell you how many times my wife has caught typos in my stuff. In a pinch on something really important, you might even send something to Andrea, who, it turns out, is the most eagle-eyed finder of typos I’ve ever met. She’s merciless.
The key is that you or someone you trust has to actively read your copy to find the spelling mistakes.
So, come Monday, I’m on the warpath. Produce clean copy, and you can avoid me. But if you allow typos into your copy, I’ll be visiting.
We here at Scene aren’t immune to typos either, if that’s what you’re thinking. So in the interest of full disclosure, here’s one of my memos to the staff from last year on that topic: “lets try to doublecheck our work before hitting publish to avoid fucking typos, pals.”
***
Jim Romenesko snagged this update from an anonymous Plain Dealer reporter:
We predicted this would happen when the company moved to this digital-first philosophy. Now, with no copy editors in the digital mix, far fewer of us on the print side and an entire layer of editors gone after layoffs, the company is reaping the consequences. It’s no one’s fault but Advance publications’. Typos are important mistakes, of course, but typos are only a symptom of the problem at the core of this backward system.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2014.
I’m guessing someone copy-edited that email before it went out…
What a douchebag. Expecting other people to read his employees’ work when he can simply HIRE COPY EDITORS AGAIN!
The clown should stop making Friday appearances on WCPN and actually sit at his desk and read text before it gets published on the website. Quinn is just another empty suit who ran the newspaper into the ground….but has a title that allows him to continually blame others for his failures.
What a surprise that an entity that has cut corners on quality control now has issues with their quality. NOMG made their bed, now they should lie in it. Now, I know this is crazy talk here, but you could also try spending some $$ and hiring actual people to check their work! I know that seems like overkill, but this is super serious so why not?
I’m guessing Andrea is his wife? Every reporter should send each story to her for proof-reading as he suggests.
This is AWESOME! When are you crazy kids going to dedicate a regular weekly column to the house of cards at NEOMG? It’s going to fall apart and fail hard….it’s just a matter of when. It makes me pine for the days of Sam Fullwood III, NOT!
Northeast Ohio Media Group Vice President of Content Chris Quinn is a first class douchebag. Most people cannot edit their own writing, certainly not immediately after writing it. Suggesting that unpaid spouses and SOs do the editing is beyond stupid.
NOMG has some very talented reporters. How long can we expect them to fill any sort of investigative journalism role in this community if this is the sort of support they receive from their employer? And without investigative journalism, how long would it be before corruption in this area exceeds the Russo/DiMora level?
I now have a zero tolerance for Mr. Quinn. I wish he’d go run another (semi) daily paper into the ground, as we need ours.
So if he is going to come after anyone who commits a typo, why doesn’t he just do that upfront and call himself a copy editor? He could pay himself like one while he’s at it, too. “So, starting Monday, you’re going to hear from me every time a typo makes it into your copy. “
My professional comment – Asking a spouse, significant other, or anyone who is not employed specifically to proof copy and assure quality is asking people to work for free. You are going to ask volunteer workers to solve this, as you say, “crisis”? As stated in other comments, hire a copy editor. Also, if you are concerned about your online presence, hire a QA Analyst to make sure your site works.
My knee jerk comment – Seriously? In-person visits to people who don’t catch typos is the best use of your time? People aren’t rolling their eyes about typos. They’re rolling their eyes at you.
I think what Quinn is doing is cool. It shows he cares. It’s not his fault reporters now have to be copy editors, bloggers, vloggers and editors instead of just reporters. The truth is it is the American consumers’ fault because they want all their content for free and they don’t even like to read that much anyways. That’s why there’s hardly any money left in journalism. The digital-first tactics are one way the medium is trying to survive the new market realities.
Whatta shmuck. As a former copy editor AND proofreader, the idea of “catching mistakes in one’s own copy” is absurd. Why else the zillions of silly, awful, and sometimes pathetic errors and typos in the millions of resumes floating around the “job market”…huh?
It’s a well-known fact that most people who write, be they jobseeker, professional writer, newspaper employee, whatever…just don’t see their own mistakes…hence the need for spouses to read resumes, copy editors to revise and correct, and proofreaders to catch whet the rest have missed.
There have even been times when my wife was a writer, editor, and monthly columnist, and she used ME to catch her mistakes (and those made by others who wrote for her). But I did get paid…we were on the same staff. It was a job, not a favor.
You just DON’T see your own errors and typos in your own work…and if this clown thinks otherwise, he’s making a grate misteak.
p.s. If they need an experienced pair of eyes, I’m available. But not for free.
Chuckles the Clown
this is what happens when it becomes a numbers game only. Reporters have ridiculous quotas to meet, and the only way to potentially meet them is to throw stuff online quick as you can and move on. No time for a careful second read. Management is getting exactly what it sows. I have all the empathy in the world foe writers and none foe management. The quotas also likely we’re created by people who had never written a word so they have no idea how long it takes to write anything. And they don’t care.
The empty suits at the PD are very angry about the embarrassing leak of the memo….the weird and strange Special Ted penned a very hilarious and quite sinister response, which again highlights the decline and fall of the daily newspaper. It also shows why PD executives were in bed with Dimora & Friends for so many years……and only got tossed from the sack when the Feds shut down the political brothel that was reserved for company prostitutes. The PD has got to be one hideous workplace and it will only get worse, as the Nixonian paranoia of the empty suits will make the lives of quota-laden reporters even worse — as they search to make further cuts to protect their golden parachutes.
Good article! Send it all to Elizabeth Sullivan to proof read. She is responsible for much of the paper’s decline.