editing

In Salon, Gary Kamiya writes in praise of editors:

The art of editing is running against the cultural tide. We are in an age of volume; editing is about refinement. It's about getting deeper into a piece, its ideas, its structure, its language. It's a handmade art, a craft. You don't learn it overnight. Editing aims at making a piece more like a Stradivarius and less like a microchip. And as the media universe becomes larger and more filled with microchips, we need the violin makers.

And then Digg got its hands on it. From the comments thread there are many gems. Ninjaboy:

I think we would need less editors if we had less grammar nazi's.

Or Merkhava:

Editors are censors. We need no more censors. We need no more "Deciders." And we need no more police clad in black armor and combat boots carrying M-16 rifles.

Which reminds me of the time I tried calling for editing on Comment is Free, the Guardian's hopelessly flame-ridden bitch-fest of a forum. "We doesn't need n0 edit0rs," someone said, "because we has the intern3ts now and we can read what we like".
Yes, we can. Until there's nothing left to read except Merkhava's blog. When your sample size is in the billions, the law of averages can take you to a very low place indeed.