The Unsung Sub-editors in Newspapers

The Hindu readers editor, Mr. K. Narayanan, in his latest op-ed piece writes about that vanishing species in a newspaper - sub-editor. He/she is no longer the final check a news story or article has to cross before it gets into print. "We are moving to the stage where the writer directly places his input on the page", says Mr. Narayanan.

His piece reminds me of my days, in the late seventies, as a sub-editor in The Times of India, New Delhi. Subbing was the least glamorous of the newspaper jobs, as Mr. Narayanan put it, and sub-editors, invisible to the public and little appreciated, were most exposed to internal upbraiding. For the benifit of those unfamiliar with the working of a newspaper, the news desk manned by sub-editors/copy editors give shape to raw copy submitted by a correspondent, and give headlines to what appears on the printed page.

Reporters/correspondents corner all the glory; get invited to booze parties, the press tours. Behind every correspondent's byline in newspapers, there is usually an unsung sub-editor.

Brendan Gill, in his book - Here at The New Yorker - wrote, and I quote: "For a time, I served as an editor as well as a writer, but the experiment proved uncongenial to my vanity. We had writers so inept that one had to rewrite them almost word for word, and when, at a cocktail or dinner party, I would hear a writer praised for a profile that was, in fact, almost entirely my handiwork, I would grind my teeth with ill-conceived rage."

Gill can be said to have spoken for the universal brotherhood of sub-editors. Speaking for myself, I have, occasionally, had an odd reporter thanking me for, what Gill calls "the usual tidying up of grammatical loose ends." But, as a class, reporters are not given to acknowledging the value-addition done to their work by rewrite persons. If anything, reporters are quick to blame the editorial desk for "butchering" their copy.

At TOI we had a Lucknow-based special correspondent, who enjoyed a sacred-cow status with the editor. We shall call him Shastri. He had a know-all air about him and, what's worse, he believed that sub-editors were part of the editorial furniture in a newspaper office. Shastri had a penchant for Victorian flourish in his writing. Which was okay in a Sunday magazine piece. But news reports on something as mundane as question hour proceedings in the legislative assembly called for straight-forward journalese, to describe who hit out at whom, and when the hell broke loose in the House.

But then Shastri had in him the genes of Shakespeare. And ignorant of his sacred cowl status, in my early days with the TOI news desk, I took liberty with his copy, cutting out the literary foreplay from a news story on zero hour hungama at the UP assembly. Shastri was not amused. He was a pal of my chief at the news service desk. The next morning our shift in-charge, K. T. R. Menon, put me wise on the scene - "We don't edit Shastri's copy; we just mark paragraphs and bung it in." Mr Menon, an accomplished rewrite man, knew better than investing his professional skills on Shastri's work. Those familiar with his editing skills, such as the TOI editor Girilal Jain, used to ask 'KTR' to "run through" editorials and his edit-page articles before they were sent down for printing.

Girilal, like most editors, had his favorites. Reporters generally had better access than sub-editors to the editor. Reporters with extensive contacts in political and bureaucratic circles could walk in to the editor's cabin, if only because Girilal, like all editors, fed on political gossip, and relied on his reporters for feedback on how his editorials and political punditry made waves in South Block. And the correspondents knew what Girilal wanted to hear, even if his editorial words of wisdom went unread by those at the government decision-making level.

We had a Pandey, Special Correspondent, whose proficiency in palm-reading rather than his professional merit opened the editor's door for him and put him on the fast track. But the snag with being such "special asset" reporter was that his sacred cow status did not survive Girilal Jain. When Arun Shourie took over as executive editor, Pandey, who had everything going for him till then, suddenly found himself as lost as a stray cow squatting on a Daryagunj road divider during rush hour.

Shourie didn't care for Pandey's proficiency in astrology. Which was too bad, because Pandey could have read into his stars and warned Arun Shourie that he wouldn't last more than six months in The Times of India. (As it turned out Shourie didn't last for more than six months on The Times.)

Some reporters might be lousy writers, but they knew how to keep their bosses in good humor. We had an Assam correspondent who made regular shipments of quality tea and honey to the news editor. That he made money running a benami taxi service went unreported. There was this Bhopal correspondent of a national daily who got a car allotted on CM's discretionary quota (this was during the permit raj) and was running it as a taxi. This was brought to the CM's notice. During one of his visits to New Delhi, the CM, when he had occasion to meet the newspaper owner, asked him, in all innocence, "But don't you pay your reporters well?" When the press baron wanted to know why the CM seemed concerned about salary levels at his newspaper, the latter remarked, "Well, your man in Bhopal, presumably, runs a taxi to make both ends meet." The correspondent was promptly transferred out of Bhopal. So much for taxi-operators who doubled as newspaper correspondents.

In contrast to the stepmotherly treatment meted out to sub-editors in Indian newspapers, a deskman on a British daily was a valued person. Reporters found it worthwhile cultivating him rather than complain against desk. At The Northern Echo, a British daily published from Darlington, UK, I did a stint as sub-editor in the mid-Sixties. Those days in Britain one was not considered for a desk job until one had put in at least five years as a reporter. Newspapers in Britain faced a perennial shortage of capable deskmen. At the Echo they thought well of sub-editors from India, "Do you know Sunny Rao?" the chief sub asked me on my first day at work. "He was a damn good sub." Sunny Rao had worked on the TOI desk in Bombay. He had left the Echo before I joined them. I realised that as an Indian I had a reputation to maintain. On the Echo editorial desk I took the slot that was vacated by another Indian and former Indian Express sub-editor, Subash Chopra, who moved over to The Times, London.

The editor rarely, if ever, questioned a sub-editor's action. The music critic of the Echo once took up with my editor Don Evans the treatment his music review had received at the editorial desk. I happened to have reworded the first paragraph of the music concert review. A couple of days after the publication of the review, Don sent word for me and politely broached the subject, saying that our music critic was unhappy about the handling of his copy by the editorial desk. I told Don that I was constrained to rewrite the first paragraph in the interest of clarity - "When I could not understand the jargon the critic had used, I didn't expect our readers would."

I'll end this piece with the last word on sacred cow Shastri. There was an instance when the editorial desk noticed a glaring literal in a story and, we, the lowly sub-editors, conspired to let Shastri's article pass through the editorial desk untouched. The reporter's reference to a public place came to be printed as 'pubic' place. The report carried Shastri's byline, and thus, our sacred cow got nailed in print. We didn't hear Shastri cribbing against sub-editors.