Editing is dead
It suddenly dawned on me, as I was searching Google for resources on teaching the basics of editing, that the word ‘edit’ today means something entirely different.
Today, the word ‘edit’ is more synonymous with ‘change’, or ‘amend’. You have photo editors, text editors, video editors, which are all, basically, tools to change and manipulate the underlying medium, be it image, text, or video. Once upon a time, perhaps before ‘Adobe’ and ‘Photoshop’ became household names, to edit something meant to prepare for print, to correct, revise and generally, make fit for general consumption.
Indeed, no one ‘edits’ in the older sense of the word. With everyone capable of generating content at the push of a button, be it a miraculous manifesto or mere mumbo jumbo, less time is spent on revising, and reviewing. After all, everyone wants to hit the climatic ‘submit’ button. The Internet was designed to disseminate information at the fastest speed possible. Your ‘publish’/'send’/'go’ button is always fancier, bigger or more noticeable than any other.
After all, you can always ‘edit’ it after the article is published.
