‘New York Times’ Gets Rid of Copy Editors; Mistakes Ensue

Dean Baquet

Roughly a year ago, The New York Times made a big change in its newsroom organization. The paper eliminated the copy-editor position and folded its traditional duties — checking articles for spelling, grammar, clarity, and stylistic and logical consistency; basic fact-checking; writing headlines — into a new, all-purpose editing position to which its then roughly 100 copy editors were invited to apply. The upshot was that about half of them left the paper.

In The Fourth Estate, Showt...