Beware an Editor Spurned

JA November 22

When the Toronto Star announced that it was outsourcing over one hundred in-house editing jobs earlier this month, the reaction was, understandably, bitter. One anonymous editor decided to take matters into their own hands, releasing a very heavily marked up copy of Star Publisher John Cruickshank’s internal memo.

The edit, which contained more than a little bit of vitriol and sarcasm, was an instant twitter hit. As Cory Doctorow observed on boingboing, this is funny stuff. Doctorow, however, wasn’t much of a fan of the actual comments:

… having looked at the markup, I have to say that I would ask for a different copyeditor in future. A lot of these edits (“avoid simplistic qualifiers” for “very”) fall under the heading of “creative disagreement” not “helpful suggestion” or “correction.”

True, however I doubt that making a ‘helpful suggestion’ was high on the list of this ed’s priorities. Most likely they wanted to slash and burn.

A nod in the direction of Ian See for flagging this.

Also, if you like this sort of fodder, have a look at Brian Joseph Davis very entertaining edit of Dan Brown on the Globe and Mail’s blog.

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