Starting today, I’m no longer a copy editor — officially, that is. After six years professionally, two in college and four in high school (if you can count whatever I thought was good editing back then), I’m moving to the editor side.
At my company, that still involves line-editing, but a lot of the job is work that looks more at the bigger picture and context than does even the best copy editing. It’s an odd place for me to be; I wanted to be in newspapers from the age of 7, knowing not long after that I was about the crafting, the editing, the cobbling together and not so much the reporting.
Part of that vision remains a reality; the newspapering and the day-to-day copy editing have now been supplanted (replaced? upgraded? shifted?) during the past two years.
My evolution is not an abandonment of copy editing, or shouldn’t be. It’s a shift to another viewpoint that in journalism is often in need of copy editing and the rigor behind it. I expect this shift, too, to add knowledge, processes and practices that I didn’t know I lacked.
So, that’s the update. Am I officially a copy editor? No. Do I remain one in spirit and discipline. Absolutely.
James daSilva 