Last Updated: September 23, 1999
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Good writing
Lately, I've visited newsrooms suffering from thin editing. Consider
this selection:
n In two newspapers, all the editors (except the editor-in-chief) glued
themselves to pagination terminals, not reading stories, just laying them
out.
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In another paper, only stories scheduled to appear on a section front got
edited.
-
One paper edited only stories turned in before 9 p.m. A third of the pieces
came in later, inevitably the most problematic copy.
-
An editorial-page chief asked me to convince his writers to allow him to
edit their editorials and columns. I asked who edited his pieces, and he
replied that no one was qualified.
In none of these cases did the editor-in-chief know about the situation.
Shocked? Perhaps you should not assume the level of editing going on in
your shop.
Why we edit
First, a primer on editing. We edit stories because fallible human beings
make mistakes. The more senior the reporter, the higher the stakes for
an error. Every story, no matter who wrote it, needs editing.
Persistence makes good reporters. The most persistent get caught up
in chasing facts and miss things, make assumptions, and simply leave things
out. Their sentences may contain ambiguities, lapses in cultural awareness,
misspelled names, etc. Some simply do not make sense.
Editing serves the readers' need to understand information. Good editors
think on two wavelengths. They read like a journalist, like a news junkie
who knows everything, catching errors and stylebook lapses. They also read
like the general reader, who is smart but doesn't follow news the way we
do. They look for papered-over cracks, omitted contexts, and simple failure
to explain.
Editing also makes the story read well, encouraging readers to learn
more than a headline and a lead. We compete with TV, remember?
Why don't we edit?
Why aren't stories getting edited? Reporters think it's because editors
spend so much time in meetings, and they're partially right. Some newsrooms
have been severely cut and don't have enough editors. In one newsroom,
ignorant consultants classified every editor title as supervisory, declaring
they had too many bosses for the number of workers, i.e., reporters. Their
publisher fired the copy desk.
Pagination and layout have absorbed so much of many editors' time that
they don't have time to read stories. Attention owners: If you paginate,
you must add copy editors. Some mid-level editors know their superiors
critique only section fronts, so they make only those stories perfect.
Some newsrooms are too disorganized (or lazy) to align editor schedules
with when the copy comes in.
What gets edited?
Here are some helpful terms. "Fall through" means only the reporter
who wrote the story has read it, more common where reporters suggest headlines,
and in papers that hire artists in layout slots. One paper I visited had
80 percent fall through. "Headline Read" means somebody read only enough
to put a head on the story, like this:
Headline: Gov. signs health bill
Lead: Gov. Nardall Tuesday signed a health bill closing all HMOs.
Cutline: Gov. Nardall signs health bill Tuesday.
"One Read" means the piece got read by only one editor. The traditional
system works better if a desk editor reads for sense, and a copy editor
for the surface: spelling, grammar and style. One person can do both at
the same time, but in "One Read," the piece commonly gets only the surface
edit.
To check out your shop, sit with your copy editors and ask them. Start
with this question: "What percentage of copy reaching you has not been
read by anyone but the writer?"
By the way, if you write (and I hope you do), who edits you?
Don Fry, an affiliate of the Poynter Institute, works as a writing
coach out of Charlottesville, Va. Call him at 804/296-6830.
