The always-interesting David Montgomery has asked a question I know a lot of people are thinking about: who needs sub-editors anyway?

And for good measure he threw in a reference to the "twilight world" of subs. 

But Montgomery used the example of TV journalists – who are not sub-edited for live reports.

He said: “I see a situation where experienced journalists that can be trusted have no barrier to communication with their audience.

“Sub-editing is a twilight world, checking things you don’t really need to check…Senior people will always monitor the content, a core group will create the product.”

But he added that individual journalists need to have “more discretion over what can be published”.

He said: “I come from a world where editor-in-chiefs are control freaks who want to control every word. We’ve got to let that go.”

I once encountered a sub whose normal week involved subbing - wait for it - two articles. Obviously an edge case, but I don't think it's a surprise that the most militant NUJ members tend to be found on subs desks.

That said, we have to tread carefully here. For one thing, legal teams will look askance at the idea of journalists talking straight to readers without any kind of formal filter (remember Andrew Gilligan). For another, big media organisations will always see a large chunk of their value being invested in reliability and accuracy, and the subs are a big component of that in any text-based news structure.

That said, subs will have to change, and I see that change being an evolution into a profoundly different role: that of curators of the news space created by the news brand. If Arianna Huffington was right when she described news media as having attention deficit disorder while the blogosphere was obsessive-compulsive, then we need some more obsessives around the place to keep the place tidy. By which I mean keeping content organised around topics, farming tags, checking search terms, seeding communities, enriching text with pictures, sound and video. As well as keeping those childish reporters in line with their spelling and grammar. More obsessives required, please. There's a ready supply on the subs desk.