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Cut Copy

This article about the current state of the news media holds few surprises (perhaps aside from the stability of newspapers). Among the items that made me nod my head in an 'Aha!' moment of recognition was the following portion regarding the downsizing of editorial staffing:

Many of the cuts have been copy editors. This has led to an increase in factual errors and typos. Another cost-saving strategy was to outsource editing and page design to regional centers. Thinner newsrooms have led to thinner news reports. There are fears that the changes will lead to a loss in quality, bringing down circulation, thus causing a further decline.
Anyone who has been reading online articles lately has surely noticed the decline in quality of the basics. Sentence structure, spelling, it's gone to the dogs. Numerous times I'll be reading an article, and be left scratching my head, having to piece together what the writer was intending to say, versus what they actually wrote. Case in point, here's the first sentence from an article about the new Motorola Atrix smartphone:

The Motorola Atrix and could be said to be running slow, without hot blazing fast data speeds.  It's not the super fast dual-core processor that is the problem but the faster AT&T HSUPA  network has not being accessed. 
See what I mean? If, indeed, copy editors are a dying breed, then is it really so hard for writers to proofread their material before publication? I'm sorry to come across so uptight about this, but we're talking about professional writers here, paid to produce coherent sentences (at the very least). It's a tad surprising to see that they're struggling so much with the basics.

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