The Death of Quality Control

Like an increasing number of people, I spend more time on the Internet than I do consuming any other type of media.  The powers-that-be have noticed: the web has supplanted just about every other possible source as the fastest way to hear about breaking news stories.  The Internet is replacing newspapers, magazines -- even books as the place where we view the greatest amount of written words.

And as a result, it occurred to me today that there have probably never been lower standards for what millions of people regularly read through the media than there are today. 

I'm a perfect example.  In grade school, I was a managing editor of my high school paper.  I was known for being a spectacular speller and possessing a pathological obsession with proper grammar.  Our last, spoof edition of our paper mocked me in a satirical article by saying I "once threatened to kill a writer for using too many commas and using 'freshman' instead of 'freshmen."

But you'd never know that about me from looking at this webpage.

That's because for whatever reason, it's much harder to spell well when you type instead of write.  And it's much harder to edit when words appear across a computer screen instead of on a printed piece of paper in front of you.  Why?  I'm not sure.  But the evidence of my own personal degradation in this area is all around me.  Even worse, I could install a spelling-correction program into my browser...but somehow still haven't gotten around to doing so yet.

I routinely notice spelling, punctuation mistakes and missing words on pages like CNN and ESPN.  That's the modern-day equivalent of routinely catching poor copyediting in the New York Times.  It's unfathomable once you consider what our standards used to be.  People could never get away with that level of aesthetic incompetence back in the days before the Web.  It seems almost commonplace now. 

That's because as the Internet has made mainstream media catch up to an ever-shorter attention span and news cycle, these sources are suffering from the same problems I do.  To be the first, you have to sacrifice quality.  The major news outlets do it every day, and sports pages can be even worse.  There's no screen for people who can provide news and fiction, no publishers, no teams of editors for thousands of newsbreakers and weblog-users.  I can feel the quality draining out of me the longer I am online...and I'm not sure what to do about it. 

Reading more offline material would probably be a good first step.

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