How Do You "Fair"?

Over the course of the past few months, the publishing industry has become increasingly more and more depressed along with the economy. Publishers like Esquire, HarperCollins, and Publisher's Weekly have all either begun or announced layoffs to their editorial staff. It's discouraging to a lot of folks in the editing & publishing industry.

At the same time, there's uplifting news. As is evidenced by the errors in Value Expectations, The Examiner (just do a search for the word "fair" in the previous two articles), and this post about Valley News by Craig Silverman, there is still need for editors throughout the world.

Sites like The Examiner, Associated Content, and Helium are rife with errors (grammatical and factual), and it's getting worse because writers are continuing to send their work there for mere pennies. If we keep relying on sites like this, the quality of writing continues to decline, because there's no editorial process. It requires editors to make certain that work is clean, concise, and factual; without that step between writer and reader, there is no certainty that the work is truly readable. Just look at Wikipedia.

So what's the answer? Keep editors around. It's a simple solution, really. The editorial process, while seemingly ambiguous to most writers and adminstrative personnel, has one very clear goal: make writing - in whatever capacity (news, fiction, essays, etc.) - presentable to the audience.