Explaining things

[supergee]

Interview with Jill Lepore, one of our best popular historians. Here’s a particularly good part:

One of the really staggering things to me about the great “newspaper death watch” of 2009 was the jeering jubilance of disruptors, their astounding confidence in the genius and efficiency of a new system of communication that, at the end of the day, did one thing above all: it killed the editor. Here’s a way to think about that: what percentage of everything “published” in, say, 1952—that is, every radio and television broadcast, every magazine, newspaper, newsletter, book—was edited, in the sense that it passed through the hands of at least one person whose entire job was to consider the judiciousness and reasonableness of the argument and the quality of the evidence? Let’s say—wild guess—more than 98 percent. And how much of everything “published” in 2017—every post, comment, clip—is edited? Who knows, but let’s say, less than 2 percent

Thanx to Arts & Letters Daily

Comments

[marahmarie]

I really couldn't agree with this more. While I hate dealing with newspapers and magazines anymore because viewing words online is so much easier and less hassle, lack of editing is probably one big reason why it's such a trashfire online, overall.

And I'm not limiting this criticism to any old online thing, either, because I too could use an editor most of the time - and a factchecker say, maybe 50% of the time (depends on what I'm posting and how important it is to have whatever I'm presenting as "facts" straight) just to catch what I think I know on a topic but maybe got all wrong or to give any further perspective upon the facts that I don't yet possess.

It's sad really, the Internet players have gone dirt cheap on what were basically quality control teams that often took many tries to get things right, and those of us who care about quality basically can't afford to have another human being reading behind us to ensure it.