thrillcat,
I concur with your last post. As I see it there's relationship between skills and knowledge - they go hand-in-hand, but it's a one-way street. And what I mean by that is this: You can have tons of knowledge and basically zero editing skills. But in order to gain any level of skill it has to be based on a foundation of knowledge. You've got to be the "button-pusher" before you become the "artist".
I just read a piece in
Creativity Magazine. It was called "Editors Roundtable", where they had a sort of casual interview with several editors, all together. In response to a question regarding the "do it yourself attitude...consumer generated content and the assumption that anyone can edit something", Steve Gandolfi said, "Anyone can learn to use a computer. But if you just talk to the people around here who have assistants, after three or four years they leave, becaue they realize they can't edit."
So there you go...
To that end, it was stated earlier, (in regards to the Apple cert. exam):
"...there are those that want to learn everything about the app and have their certified knowledge and skills available as a valuable resource to employers..." So, how does the exam test your
skills? Forgive my ignorance, since I'm
not one of the certified individuals, but how can the certification exam test anything but knowledge? Do the examiners actually watch you edit something and critique it?
Further, thrillcat said, "Being a good editor takes something called taste, and no user's manual is going to teach you that." I'll add that experience goes a long way too. You may have a "good eye" right out of the gate - as a rookie. But the more gigs you do, hopefully, the better you become. There's no replacement for time in the trenches.
Finally I'll add that be a good editor, in my humble opinion, requires being a good communicator. Personality counts! I've never seen a classified ad, looking for an editor, that did not say: "Must be able to work unsupervised
and as part of a team." There was another question, in that article that I mentioned, that goes into this too. The overwhelming consensus is that the edit is typically a collaboration. You might be the "hands" that are driving but, likely, others are going to have input and you've got to be able to tactfully tell people that their ideas are not going to work or be able to choke down changing your edit because their input/alterations were, indeed, valid.
Again, the certification can't hurt. But it's certainly no magic bullet.
