Within the hierarchy of the newsroom, the copy editor is the low man on the totem pole. He is, basically, a human spellchecker and guardian of the newspaper’s arcane style guide, a set of rules (like whether to spell the word “aging” or “ageing”) most editors and reporters either ignore or forget.

…

If he is unacknowledged within the newsroom and a relic online, it is because we as readers have evolved. We no longer sweat the small stuff of proper hyphenation and correct usage of semi-colons - it’s the ideas and opinions that we’re after. If a few words here and there are misspelled, so what? We’re smart enough to know it hardly matters to the quality of the story or argument.

(The Lonely Life of the Lowly Copy Editor)

It’s a different case for bi-language newsroom, where copy-editing is a lot of work. They are crucial, because desk editors are chained to the responsibility of handling reporters and collecting stories. Copy editors I used to work with are awesome. Not only they are my spellchecker (or grammar-checker for that matter), they also give a lot of feedback. I miss them all. 

Also, I can only tolerate typos in personal writings (emails, tweets, blog posts), and not mass media. Imagine if you must go through ten typos in a newspaper article.