ACES-Do blogs threaten our future?
Tom Mangan's session this morning was interesting. I've written here before about his basic thesis -- that if editors, especially copy editors, ignore blogs and other parts of cyberspace, we risk having our jobs marginalized -- so I won't belabor it (you also can check out his blog -- Prints the Chaff link in the sidebar). But there are a couple of interesting things to add, I think.

"If you are editing every day, I think you should be writing every day" and blogs give editors a way to do that. Good point, Tom. Copy editors especially need to know the travails of writing, and with more copy editors being hired with that specialty and not necessarily coming off reporting jobs, as Tom says we owe it to writers to stay abreast.

His second observation is that online editing will expand editing duties -- focusing on the micro issues of grammar and style will have to be balanced with a greater need for links and context. Tom calls it developing a "meta-narrative -- a running narrative of your main story." That's a lot of what we're trying to do with the storybuilder positions at Newsplex. Tom suggests it's like developing the writethru skill that wire-service editors have.

So, good presentation. Killer soundtrack. But about those notecards (grin)....

More from Houston later.