Though their work is, at its best, invisible, the imprint of copy desks on newsroom culture is enormous.

Image A classic copy editor’s spike. Even today, we “spike” stories. Credit... Timeseum/Gift of Suzanne Daley

Desk chiefs are still called slots, recalling the days when they functioned as slots through which raw stories were sent to copy readers and edited stories were dispatched to the composing room. The slots sat inside a semicircular array of desks known then, and now, as the rim. Copy is still spiked, though it’s been a long time since paper was impaled on metal. And we still cut and paste, without the scissors or glue pots.

Copy desks have been the talk of the Times newsroom in recent days, after the most fundamental realignment in memory. As of Dec. 5, the metro, foreign-national, business and sports copy desks ceased to exist. Their work was taken over by four new groups, called the live, projects, enterprise and weeklies desks.

“Our copy desks have always reflected the organizing principles of the newsroom as a whole, so that Metro as a coverage area, for example, meant we had a metro copy desk,” Susan Wessling, the senior editor in charge of newsroom planning, wrote to the newsroom last summer. “But less and less of what we need to do is based strictly on geography or topic area. With our accelerated coverage of everything, in every form, we need desks that can operate with appropriate pace and metabolism for different types of journalism, not just different subject areas.”

Charles Knittle, formerly the slot on the foreign-national copy desk (a merger he superintended), is now co-chief of the live desk, with Peter Blair. “In addition to looking out for accuracy, and style and fairness,” Mr. Knittle said, “the copy desks have added another function, which is to try to foster a basic process literacy across all the new specialties — video, interactive design, social media, mobile and other subdivisions of digital production — in the hope that some of what Times copy editors do can take hold in these new forms.”

This transitional moment offers a chance to reflect gratefully on the role of copy editors in shaping the overall report, and in polishing words that appear under others’ bylines.