Over the past week, I’ve filed similar stories for a major national UK daily newspaper and a major national US daily newspaper. The proximity of the assignments palpably brought out the differences between the ways in which the arts editors process stories in these two countries for me. I think the contrasts are fairly representative of the editorial approaches at work in the two countries, judging by work I’ve done for many media outlets on both sides of the pond over the years.
The article for the American publication went through six rounds of edits before appearing online and then in print the next day. Four different editors worked on it with me and I communicated with two of them on the phone as well as email. The piece was checked and double-checked and triple-checked for factual errors. Every turn of phrase was questioned for clarity and concision.
The article for the British publication was published about 20 minutes after I filed it. I didn’t hear back from any editor. I simply sent off the draft, someone at the other end made some changes and threw the thing out the door. End of story.
In both cases, what appeared in print was an approximation of what I originally filed. I can’t say I was thrilled with either result. But because I consider myself a team player, I tend not to stress too much about editorial decisions unless they radically screw with my thinking, which is generally quite rare.
I’d like to be able to point to something in the national character of the UK and the US media that can be gleaned from these radical differences in editorial style. I guess the US is a much more litigious country, which might explain the media’s crazed efforts to dot the t’s and cross the i’s. But I’m not sure what it is about the British newsroom that would elicit such a lackadaisical approach. Maybe it’s to do with a greater self-confidence based on a longer history of churning out articles?
Whatever the above observations point to, I’d prefer an editorial approach that’s in between these two extremes. I’d like to see what it is that the publication intends to publish before they put it out there. But at the same time, I don’t understand the necessity for obsessing over every single phoneme.