Nieman Foundation at Harvard
London Tory broadsheet The Telegraph is reversing the traditional copyflow: having reporters post their stories online, then editing them once they’re up. Assistant editor Justin Williams:
We’re experimenting with post moderation on web stories — so we have either the desk or, in an increasing number of instances, writers publishing all stories direct to the website. Our production journalists then post moderate that content after it has been put live and we use this as the first stage in the newspaper sub-editing process.
Emphasis mine. I can hear murmurings of “The horror! The horror!” from copy desks around the globe. Still, I think this is worthy experimentation. As Clay Shirky argued in Here Comes Everybody, the Internet’s favored state is “publish then edit,” not “edit then publish,” and it’s worth seeing if news organizations can harness the value of the former.
