The Elegant Sufficiency

Editing. Again

In light of stuff I've said here previously about editing, thought some of you might be happy to see me, over time and to a degree, eating my words — thanks to some frustrating discussions in the office about an online presence for our magazine, and thanks to US media commentator Jeff Jarvis, whose thoughts on his Buzz Machine blog are always thought-provoking and penetrating and forward-thinking. "Editing's a drag," he says in a recent post. Rupert Murdoch, he says, has complained about "8.3 editors touching the average story in the Wall Street Journal". He goes on to say:

"When I taped a segment for CBS News once, I counted 12 people who touched it before it was even edited for air. At Time Inc., the were famous for editing and re-editing every story until it was churned into butter. At The Times, there are three editors for every reporter. But when I consulted at About.com, it had about eight writers for every editor (that ratio has since changed). About.com, like blogs, is a publish-first, edit-later operation. On this blog, you could say that I have no editors — or you could say that I have 100,000 of you."

On Air

Here's the link to yesterday's ABC Radio National Media Report on food and the media — presenter Antony Funnell quizzed me about blogging and what it means to me, and also talked to Maeve O'Meara and Philip Johnson of e'cco in Brisbane about television cooking shows, food reviews, the saturation media coverage of all things food-related, and the increasing public knowledge about food.