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Sub-editor is a person who collects reports from reporters and prepares the report to publish or broadcast. He also corrects and checks articles in a newspaper before they are printed.
Responsibilities of a sub-editor
- To be a good sub, you must be an all-rounder, you need to know media law, have a keen eye for detail and be able to put a story together with speed and style.
- Depending on the nature of employment and the extent to which production and layout work falls within the sub-editor's remit, tasks typically involve the following:
- Editing copy, written by reporters or features writers, to remove spelling mistakes and grammatical errors;
- Rewriting material so that it flows or reads better and adheres to the house style of a
particular publication;
- Ensuring that a story fits a particular word count by cutting or expanding material as necessary;
- Writing headlines that capture the essence of the story or are clever or amusing;
- Writing stand firsts or 'sells' (brief introductions, which sum up the story underneath the headline);
- Liaising with reporters, journalists and editors in checking facts and stories to ensure they are accurate, adhere to copyright laws, are not libellous or go against the publication's policy;
- Cropping photos and deciding where to use them for best effect and writing picture captions;
- Proofreading complete pages produced by other sub-editors using the main basic
proofing symbols;
- Working to a page plan to ensure that the right stories appear in the correct place on each page;
- Laying out pages and, depending on the nature of the role, playing a part in page design;
NatalieR answered the question on June 15, 2022 at 12:36