Use of ‘transcribers’: Journalists should write up their own interviews

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 29 October 2010 at 10:01
Tags: Journalism, National Newspapers, Newspapers, People

A telling tweet from Guardian rock critic Alexis Petridis, who says his Take That interview “is back from the transcribers” and has posted this amusing picture of an extract from it here.

Now call me naive, but I really had no idea that journalists did this. And it strikes me as rather risky. I would rather trust my own ears because if you get something wrong and it ends up in print, I don’t think lawyers will be too impressed by the excuse that “it was the transcriber’s fault”.

UPDATE:

Via Twitter (again) Alexis (not Alex as I initially wrote, sorry) - says he pays for transcribers when the deadline is tight or he is being paid enough to justify the outlay. He says of course he checks the transcript against the tape and that ‘loads of people do it’.