The Incontestable Importance of Editors

In most areas of publishing, the importance of editors is never in doubt. But in the world of newsletter publishing, editors have played only a minor role. They are usually tasked with cleaning up the text. And rarely asked to make decisions like, “Should this be published at all?”

I’ve not convinced all of my colleagues to work with highly intelligent and skilled editors. But for my own writing, I’ve relied on the same editor to guide me in everything I’ve written in the past 40 years. J doesn’t pay much attention to grammar anymore. (The algorithms do a good job of that.) But she regularly helps me sort through my ideas, separating the wheat from the chaff.

The older I get, the more important this becomes. I’m finding that my confidence in what is interesting or funny, clever or juvenile is diminishing quickly. Luckily, J is still good at knowing the difference.

For example, look at the image above. (It’s from a viral twitter thread featuring AI-generated portraits of all 46 US presidents reimagined as professional wrestlers.) I saw it somewhere and thought it was clever. But I had doubts about including it in this issue.

So, I sent it to J, saying: “I’m passing this along because, at first, I thought it was funny. Now, I’m not sure.

She wrote back: “If you have to ask…”