The Art of Editing continues to be the standard by which editing texts are judged, offering the most comprehensive and up-to-date discussion of editing available. Traditional newspaper editing forms the foundation of the text, while attention is also placed on the other areas in which journalists are increasingly finding online media, corporate magazines, broadcasting, public relations and advertising.
I used this to teach an editing class upon recommendation from a professor who had taught it in the past. In terms of context and theories, it has interesting points to hit. But a textbook about editing that is so poorly edited is just disappointing and embarrassing. Even my students would call it out in class, and I said to them plain and simple: "Do as they say, not as they do." Reached out to the publisher about some of it with no response.
This book is really geared toward journalism students from 15 years ago who want to go into the newspaper business. The subtitle ("In the Age of Convergence") implies that there is some digging in to what it means to publish on the web, but there's no timely, specific detail here. you can lear what a "browser" is and also learn other terms that never caught on such as "linkmeister" (?!?!), but when a book describes America Online as the portal to the Internet for millions of Americans, and mentions the Gulf War but not the Iraq War, you have to wonder if they really updated much for the 2005 edition. If so, it wasn't "edited" very well.
I was hoping for information about magazine editing and web publishing, but there is very little of that in this book compared with traditional newspaper stuff. The nuts-and-bolts grammar stuff might be useful for students, but there are better books out there for that. Where is the true editing text for the 21st century?