You may be tempted to think that an editor is a computer programme, such as Word, that fixes mistakes you might make while typing, makes suggestions and even assists you in composing a text when you lack inspiration. While this is true and this usage of the term may have taken precedence in today’s digitalized world, this is not the only meaning of the word “editor”.
In fact, long before being a computer programme, an editor was – and still is! – a person. And, as in the case of a translator (who, despite what some people may think, could never be truly matched by Google Translate, because a language is not just a collection of words and rules), a human editor is much more than a computer programme. It is a human being with a solid, complex education – the kind of education you can get in the British Cultural Studies MA programme – and a general background of knowledge, sensibility, creativity and resourcefulness that no machine could ever match.
You’ve guessed it by now: being an editor is one of the most exciting jobs you can land as a graduate of our programme. You get to read a lot and you work with the most creative people. And cultural studies will train you particularly well for trimming, adapting and arranging texts, as the solid cultural knowledge you will get will make you the best mediator between the author of a text and his/her audience.
An editor may work for a whole variety of text publishers: publishing houses, newspapers and journals – whether print or online – and may put together collections of creative texts or scientific articles, using his/her informed scrutiny to make them hold well together and make their point convincingly. An editor may prepare special issues, commission articles and book reviews for collective volumes or journals, cosmeticize texts for publication and, at a more advanced stage, closer to publication, engage in copy-editing.
An editor can be a lot more creative than that. We tend to think of poets and novelists as people endowed with superhuman imagination. But few know that a creative piece is never published without passing through an editor’s hand, who has a more informed idea of what the market expects and will therefore advise the writer to better integrate the text in current trends and ultimately make it more successful.
Editors are people who know a lot of things and are needed in a whole variety of places. A lot of our graduates have worked as editors, as you can see if you visit our alumni page. A cultural studies programme of the variety, complexity and solid contemporary anchoring of this one will prepare you to be among the most competitive candidates for this job.
British Cultural Studies 