Amidst a long memo announcing staff cuts and reorganization, The Morning Call lets it slip that copy editors are slowly being replaced by a glorified computer spell check.

As someone who supports new technology, I can't argue against the logic of this move. By letting the computers check spelling, grammar, AP style and more, it reduces the demand on copy editors. Logically, that means newspapers need fewer copy editors than before.

Here's how editor Ardith Hilliard describes the plan in a long memo posted on Romenesko:

We hope to eventually launch a capital project to install a Tansa editing system in conjunction with our Hermes pagination system and other production systems. Tansa is a text proofing system that checks spelling, word usage and style, punctuation, hyphenation and some grammar. Dictionaries can be added to this system - word dictionary (AP approved dictionary), AP Stylebook and Morning Call stylebook, except for entries that involve news judgment. Tansa would save editing time for the copy desk, allowing us to more effectively operate a universal desk with fewer editors. The system would help reporters and data assistants file cleaner copy to the desk, thus saving copyediting time. The copy desk also would use it during the final edit to more quickly catch errors and to edit calendars and other lists that could move faster through the process than having a copy editor read every word. This system has been successfully implemented at other newspapers and is currently being tested on the Hermes system at Newsday.

The computer can't replace all the copy editors because it can't comprehend the story and it can't question the facts. And that's the hard stuff.

Still, this could be only the first chapter of this story. Picture a world rife with budget cuts that obliterate the copy desk by replacing people with computers, and leaving the "hard stuff" for desk editors.