The stuff that doesn't matter

Why read this story?

Editor's note: Welcome to this second edition of One Less Thing To Worry About. First of all apologies if this whole newsletter seems a little breathless. I've had the most extraordinarily busy but wonderful week and, as we speak, it is lunchtime on Friday and Ashish is incessantly pinging me on WhatsApp, poking me on Slack, DMing me on Twitter, IMing me on Facebook and leaving critical reviews of my skills and competencies on LinkedIn. But let this be a learning moment for all of us. You see the vast majority of everything you read in a newspaper, website and/or magazine was put together at the absolute last minute by exhausted writers, beleaguered editors and—tears come at the very thought of them—wretched copy editors who get all the upside of being absolutely essential, and all the downsides of being loathed by everyone else in the office. If the modern newsroom is a football team, the copy desk is the substitute goalkeeper. More seriously, though, this column comes at a particularly timely moment. A presidential debate has just taken place in the US …