ABSTRACT
You don’t see many movies in which the hero writes a great standfirst or sensitively cuts down a 1,200-word article to the required 800. Few novels are written about the thrill of the chase for the right headline. Subeditors are the unsung heroes of journalism, and if they are unnoticed by the public, their fate within the magazine office or newsroom can be worse. They are there to blame for everything that goes wrong, yet when they do their job well few reporters or writers will notice. Editors do notice though, because they know how heavily the success of a magazine depends on the quality of the subediting. You can produce a newspaper or magazine entirely from agency copy, but you need subeditors to work that raw material into journalism of the appropriate style and standard for your own publication. The right tone has to be ensured, the interests of the readers taken into account, the presentation made suitable for the publication worked at.
