I’ve seen a lot of these arguments, starting over a decade ago. The Internet was considered new* and everyone involved in any communications format thought the unleashed possibilities were endless. In contrast, the editorial staff in the department downstairs would regularly post examples of the drivel that could be found in Vanity Press (editor-less self-published material) products. The examples showed how important a good editor (and not all editors are good or even deserve their position) is for screening out the hopeful writers with
a) ideas that should never have been exhumed
b) spelling and/or grammar below grade school level
c) a complete lack of coherency in their thoughts
d) a complete lack of logic in their arguments
e) Any or all of the above, plus worse.
But The Internet was hailed by so many as the final step in becoming a paperless society; the end of printed newspapers, magazines, and books in favor of reading things off the monitor. Amazon’s Kindle and its copycats were hailed as the nail in the printer’s coffin. Neither is true, they’re just additional venues through which people can acquire content.
And while the flourishing of venues should have opened up more jobs for quality editors, much in the way the advent of film and television led to more work for Broadway and Vaudeville actors and writers, the lack of quality editors to fill the roles (or the excessive thrift of companies in not creating such roles in their structure) basically led to society accepting substandard quality as par-for-the-course. [Yes, I know that’s a self-contradictory phrase.]
How many times have you gone to a website, read a blog, or even perused a message-board to see poor spelling, horrible grammar, and a zillion other examples of people failing to follow the basic rUle5 uv descent writing? Whether that failure is due to a lack of knowledge or a willful disregard or oppositional defiance is irrelevant. The repeated distribution of crappy writing has led to a general acceptance of poor writing – society has lowered its standards, gaining quantity in exchange for quality – from Instant Messages all the way up to novels and treatises.
The real problem is that the majority of people, from Twits texting out of their bathrooms to Executives issuing corporate memos to Corporate Counsel filing Supreme Court briefs, are content with that. They’re content partly because they never learned better, and partly because their focus on the bottom line means volume profits are better investments than the development of quality (and commensurate pricing). The explosion of available outlets (basically infinite, since just about anybody can afford a computer and an IP registration) means there’s less competition for more ways to express oneself. That’s not necessarily a good thing, since it allows the distribution of schlock with
a) poorly developed ideas, arguments, or even thoughts
b) content with horrible mechanics
c) typically some combination of the above, and worse
So, yes, traditional publishing is suffering and dying. However, that’s not good for readers or writers, it’s definitely bad for established authors, and it’s certainly not good for people within the industry.
The same, by the way, is true of the newspaper industry, the music industry, the music recording industry, the movie industry, the television feature industry, and the television news industry – but take those arguments to separate threads.
*It wasn’t. It had simply been wrested from decades of development in the echoing hallways of government/academia/military and opened to the public, triggering the dot-com boom (and bust) and providing another target that conservatives and Luddites could blame for the downfall of society (because television, transistor radios, movies, comic books, telephones, and Gutenberg’s press were only preparatory steps…)
