ACES Post Time

Blogging at the ACES conference can be found here from my colleagues Jim Thomsen, Gerri Berendzen, Neil Holdway, Daniel Hunt and others.

A followup to Doug Fisher from yesterday's meeting: You said that the economic value of what we do is miminal, as in no one would pay much for "news" because it is so transitory. That what we sold was the package. My question is, does that apply just to "breaking news"? If one is talking about, oh, Sue Shellenbarger's columns on balancing work and family in the WSJ, things one might clip, would that be of a higher economic value? What sort of editorial content is worth more money than just stuff you might find on A1 or B1? Hope you can reply.

Doug Ward, Sara Hendricks and Kathy Schenck moderated a session this morning based on comments in the opening session, about what can raise the profile of copy editors and what can raise the value of ACES. One thing that keeps coming up is that ACES, which was founded to raise the profile of newspaper copy editors as a result of the early 1990s American Society of Newspaper Editors study, is still seen by many who come for the first time as being too much of a newspaper organization. Yet at the same time, the number of potential newspaper employees who have never heard of ACES is still huge.

ACES would seem to have a bright future as a broad-based organization for copy editors whether they are in newspapers, books, magazines, PR departments, organizational Web sites, online journalism, or whatever. On the other hand, given the efficiency with which the scythe reaps its harvest in newsrooms and what it cuts down first, does ACES still have its major work to do as a news-organization advocacy group based around newspapers and news magazines? Because time, resources and energy are limited.