Copy Editing for the Web

A report in the Columbia Journalism Review claims that websites published by magazines don't have the same copy standards as the print version of the magazine. The research project surveyed 665 consumer magazines, about 12 percent of which had print circulations of more than 500,000.

Stephanie Clifford of the NY Times reports:

Copy-editing requirements online were less stringent than those in print at 48 percent of the magazines. And 11 percent did not copy-edit online-only articles at all.

A similar trend held with fact-checking. Although 57 percent of the magazines fact-check online submissions in the same way they fact-check print articles, 27 percent used a less-stringent process. And 8 percent did not fact-check online-only content at all. (The other 8 percent did not fact-check either print or online articles.)

There was also variance in how corrections were indicated to readers. Almost all of the magazine sites — 87 percent — corrected minor errors, like typos and misspellings, without telling readers of the change. And 45 percent of the sites changed factual errors without letting readers know they had gotten it wrong.

What does this mean? Do web writers and editors care less about grammar and fact-checking than those in the print side of the business? Or in the race to be the first to cover breaking news, has speed trumped accuracy?