I won’t disagree with you KB, but we should also consider how wages and work conditions have changed in the last 25 years. Today, the writer and the editor are quite often the same person. Any college freshman knows (or should) that writers can’t effectively proof their own work. Yet, many reporters and professional sportswriters have no choice. Often too, the writer not only has the work of two people in the writing process, but may also have to do the page layout and/or ad sales. The job isn’t what it used to be. Newspapers are downsizing and not keeping up with other professional wage rates. I think we get the quality we pay for. Your local newspaper writer or radio sportscaster makes less coin than the guy who picks up and recycles the newsprint after its read - if it is read at all.
I had a 46-year career as a sportswriter. During that time I was both helped and hurt by editors. Once, I referred to a boxer as "Griffith" when his name was "Griffin." Thankfully, the editors caught it and corrected it throughout the piece.
But it goes both ways. I did a feature on the late Terry Lanni, CEO of Caesars and a prominent thoroughbred horse owner. I called the Caesars Forum Shops, a series of high end retailers, "tony" (posh, elegant) and it was edited to "tiny." I also noted that Lanni, who served us both coffee out of a Styrofoam cups, was without "affectation" (pretense). It was changed to without "affection."
Mortified, I explained to Lanni what had happened and he was generous enough to accept my apology. In fact, later that year, after Arcangues won the Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita, Lanni offered me a "ride" home on the Caesars Gulfstream airplane.
To Big Bird's larger point, every journalist, from Grantland Rice to Red Smith to Jim Murray to Frank Deford, needs and deserves an editor.
By the way, there is a diference between journalists and writers. All journalists are writers but not all writers are journalists. We ink-stained wretches who covered sports and often were demeaned as working in the "candy store" by those journalists toiling on the national, international or metro desks, appreciate the distinction.
