Spotting A Pink Slip: ‘St. Louis P-D Editor’ Eulogizes Copy Editors In Song

As the year-end season for newsroom layoffs approaches, it’s a good time to revisit “Copy Editor’s Lament,” the catchy song written and recorded by St. Louis Post-Dispatch political writer Christopher Ave. As its title suggests, the song laments the wave of layoffs that have thinned the ranks of copy editors, the “human safety net,” as Ave sings. Sample verse: "AP Stylebook is my bible/Helped me stop a suit for libel/But nothing ensures my survival now.”
--Mark Fitzgerald