Do Corens and Perez herald death of the byline?

The OED’s definition of ‘byline’ is “a line at the beginning or end of a piece of writing in a newspaper or magazine that gives the writer’s name”. But a number of insights into media workings have made this writership concept much murkier than before.

Most readers understand that in newspapers and magazines, a certain level of editing takes place without affecting the byline. The headlines and the clever captions are usually the work of the sub-editors – who remain largely anonymous and uncredited.

It’s always interesting to gain some awareness into this process. Memorably, Times columnist Giles Coren went on a remarkable rant against sub-editors who, he felt, messed up his copy beyond recognition. You can almost visualise his quivering vitriol in every lower-case ‘I’ and typo:

...the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a’… When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

It’s easy to snigger at Coren’s ending-on-a-stressed-syllable pedantry. But it’s understandable to baulk at having your name stuck on something you didn’t write.

Over at Comment is Free, Coren’s sister Victoria also points out the role of the subs – albeit in a much more measured, less green-ink kind of a way. In response to comments criticising her Which is thicker? A supermodel or a piece of celery headline, she replied:

The Telegraph went one step further in confusing the role of the author – by allegedly printing agency copy using fictional bylines. Similarly, the rumour that Perez Hilton’s sister now writes most of ‘his’ posts is said to be the industry’s worst kept secret.

Journalists copying and pasting press releases is nothing new. And there are plenty of stories about senior journalists nicking interns’ ideas under their own all-important bylines. However, with more transparency and greater democracy in the media, will this myth of single authorship remain?

Nadia Saint has written for titles including the New Statesman, and is a member of the creative team at LEWIS PR. She also blogs at www.lewis360.com.