Buried at the bottom of an email exchange with a publisher:
Editorial Director, to Editor: Another [Murray] post.
Editor, to Copyeditor: Like we discussed, let the writer have his voice, but use your discretion to correct/rein in where needed.
Copyeditor: I'll do my best.
Hey look, I'm just tickled at the idea that there is someone being paid even a small portion of a salary to rein me in where needed. (So many people have been doing it for so long for free.)
But this exchange does strike me as a sign of the content marketing moment, where those who oversee corporate media platforms want their stuff to sound edgy ("let the writer have his voice") without ever saying anything that could possibly offend a customer or a client ("rein in where needed").
That's not going to work long-term, because the truth is, readers read partly because they want to see red, or see blood. They read in semi-conscious hopes that they—or someone else—actually will be spectacularly, explosively offended. And when readers sense there is no chance of that happening in a particular arena, they'll find another arena where it might.
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