So now that the semester is basically over, I wanted to take a look back in review of what I've learned about news editing in the past few months. Considering that I didn't know much about editing coming into the class, it's safe to say that I learned quite a bit.
Perhaps the area that I learned the most in is headlines. Coming into the class I really knew nothing about headlines except that they needed to catch the reader's attention. Now I know about the counts necessary for properly formatting headlines, the proper way to transition from one line to the next and how to write a better sounding headline. Headline writing also proved to be maybe the most challenging part of the process of editing. It was genuinely difficult to write a solid headline while sticking with all the necessary parameters.
Another thing I learned was just how much editors really have to look out for. After taking the first lab exam and several quizzes where we had to check for errors, it proved quite difficult to actually catch every single mistake. To be able to perform such a task with deadline looming just seems like it would be even harder and incredibly nerve-wracking. I didn't really think it was that difficult before because I've always been pretty good with grammar and punctuation, but all the AP stuff with all the proper ways to say things is just overwhelming.
With regards to what I learned in lecture, I particularly enjoyed the bit about good taste and pictures. It was a really interesting lecture because of the debating that an editor has to do concerning what types of pictures can be published. I never really thought much about pictures before because I only really cared if the pictures looked cool or not. But now after learning about pictures being modified and whether that is acceptable and pictures being too graphic or gory and whether those are okay to publish, I've come to garner a new appreciation for what goes into publishing pictures.
Overall, the editing class definitely helped me out a lot in my march toward professional journalism.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Outsourcing
I'm a person who's not so fond of the whole outsourcing idea for newspaper affairs. I'm not exactly a republican, and I'm not exactly angry because Americans are losing their jobs to members of different countries, but I do feel it's not such a smart move. Like we talked about in class, I definitely feel that locality is important to local newspapers. It is difficult for foreigners to know what a specific town, region, or city 8,000 miles away is like. That makes it difficult to properly monitor the English language used in the context of the newspaper's area.
Like we talked about in class, newspaper editing sometimes may require some local area knowledge. It often requires contacting and searching in regional terms because not everything is always available over the internet. Local research and contacting can often be difficult to accomplish from a place like India with its completely different time zone. Being on the other side of the world has its limits.
Like discussed in class, outsourcing is nothing new to American industry. Big Business companies are always looking for the cheapest way to produce their goods so they can make the largest profit on their goods. But to make profit the number one goal of distributing newspapers is to go against what newspapers have historically been. Newspapers have always been an integral part of communities as a valid and reliable source of local, national and foreign news as well as a go-to guide for a community. When the yellow journalism era came about and profit became the leading motivator for journalism, an era was born that is typically considered to be the dark ages of journalism. Going back to this frame of mind today can again hurt the journalism industry.
Like we talked about in class, newspaper editing sometimes may require some local area knowledge. It often requires contacting and searching in regional terms because not everything is always available over the internet. Local research and contacting can often be difficult to accomplish from a place like India with its completely different time zone. Being on the other side of the world has its limits.
Like discussed in class, outsourcing is nothing new to American industry. Big Business companies are always looking for the cheapest way to produce their goods so they can make the largest profit on their goods. But to make profit the number one goal of distributing newspapers is to go against what newspapers have historically been. Newspapers have always been an integral part of communities as a valid and reliable source of local, national and foreign news as well as a go-to guide for a community. When the yellow journalism era came about and profit became the leading motivator for journalism, an era was born that is typically considered to be the dark ages of journalism. Going back to this frame of mind today can again hurt the journalism industry.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Quality-Control Quandary
This was an interesting article; especially for me, since my research paper dealt with online editing, and this article was related to it.
The article talks a lot about the difficulties of ensuring nicely edited, clean publications while having to deal with such things as less copy-editors and less time to edit. With less and less and less of everything can editors really be expected to edit properly in a traditional sense?--is the question this seems to be asking.
"Doing more with less is always going to mean a compromise in quality. Three sets of eyes are always better than two," said Washington Post A-section copy desk chief Bill Walsh.
This is the main problem that is presented with print publications. The size of a newsroom staff and of a newspaper itself is constantly shrinking at the moment. There are less reporters writing, less editors checking, and less pages. This presents the problem of double-checking, or triple-checking or however much checking was previously used for editors at different papers. The problem is this luxury isn't there anymore. This means more errors are likely to leak into the publication--which isn't good.
Internet journalism presents another problem. With the need to present news constantly and as fast as possible, editing becomes difficult. As the article notes, editing online is a place where quality of the edits seems to take a backdoor to the speed of presentation. People want their news fast when it breaks. Online editors have begun to respond to that by not taking as much time editing and instead breaking the news as fast as possible. But one luxury that the Internet has is that it can constantly be edited. So online editors fall back on that--the fact that an online article can always be edited later after publication.
The article talks a lot about the difficulties of ensuring nicely edited, clean publications while having to deal with such things as less copy-editors and less time to edit. With less and less and less of everything can editors really be expected to edit properly in a traditional sense?--is the question this seems to be asking.
"Doing more with less is always going to mean a compromise in quality. Three sets of eyes are always better than two," said Washington Post A-section copy desk chief Bill Walsh.
This is the main problem that is presented with print publications. The size of a newsroom staff and of a newspaper itself is constantly shrinking at the moment. There are less reporters writing, less editors checking, and less pages. This presents the problem of double-checking, or triple-checking or however much checking was previously used for editors at different papers. The problem is this luxury isn't there anymore. This means more errors are likely to leak into the publication--which isn't good.
Internet journalism presents another problem. With the need to present news constantly and as fast as possible, editing becomes difficult. As the article notes, editing online is a place where quality of the edits seems to take a backdoor to the speed of presentation. People want their news fast when it breaks. Online editors have begun to respond to that by not taking as much time editing and instead breaking the news as fast as possible. But one luxury that the Internet has is that it can constantly be edited. So online editors fall back on that--the fact that an online article can always be edited later after publication.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Numb3rs
Since we've been talking about numbers recently in lab, I decided to write about numbers in news this week.
Recently, I read a report about an airplane that crashed into a body of water somewhere in Africa (forgot the details and lost the link forgive me). The plane was hijacked but the hijackers were overcome and for some reason the plane needed to be immediately landed. The pilots felt the least destructive possible way of landing it at the time would have been to land on the water. The plane hit hard, broke up, and exploded. The report said 1 in 4 of the passengers died.
1 in 4.
1 in 4 is a ratio of the amount of people that died and really leaves a lot to be told. That was all the report said though. No information about the total number of passengers, no information about the amount of people that died, just the ratio. 1 in 4 is not that crazy or impacting if you think of it as a small charter plane with 4 people on it. That would mean one person died. But if you think of a large plane with 320 passengers. That would mean 80 died. Which adds a lot more of an impact to the story. Numbers can really change what a story means.
At the same time, how okay is it with intentionally manipulating numbers to add impact to the story. Must a writer present all the information for the story? Is it ethical to only present certain portions of the numbers to shape the point or direction of the story? I'd say no because it's not a reporters job to manipulate stories.
Recently, I read a report about an airplane that crashed into a body of water somewhere in Africa (forgot the details and lost the link forgive me). The plane was hijacked but the hijackers were overcome and for some reason the plane needed to be immediately landed. The pilots felt the least destructive possible way of landing it at the time would have been to land on the water. The plane hit hard, broke up, and exploded. The report said 1 in 4 of the passengers died.
1 in 4.
1 in 4 is a ratio of the amount of people that died and really leaves a lot to be told. That was all the report said though. No information about the total number of passengers, no information about the amount of people that died, just the ratio. 1 in 4 is not that crazy or impacting if you think of it as a small charter plane with 4 people on it. That would mean one person died. But if you think of a large plane with 320 passengers. That would mean 80 died. Which adds a lot more of an impact to the story. Numbers can really change what a story means.
At the same time, how okay is it with intentionally manipulating numbers to add impact to the story. Must a writer present all the information for the story? Is it ethical to only present certain portions of the numbers to shape the point or direction of the story? I'd say no because it's not a reporters job to manipulate stories.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Three Biggest Advantages of Editing on the Digital Newsfloor (actually one)
Space. Space. And more space.
As talked about in today's lecture, more and more newspapers seem to be dropping print editions and becoming either partially or exclusively news websites. And while online news brings new challenges for newspaper staffs, it brings one special luxury: space. While with print editions newspapers had to count their characters, inches and words, in the digital world all of this counting can go down the drain (unless papers pay writers per word).
Sure the internet has costs like bandwidth, but characters take up a relatively insignificant amount of bandwidth. This brings a number of luxuries to writers and editors. No longer does and editor have to create headlines that have to be not only attractive but short at the same time. Now editors can create headlines that pop, attract attention and adequately describe the story without the need for cutting out words, characters or spacing.
Likewise, writers of stories can now disregard word limits. They can take the time to fully develop stories. They can include information that might otherwise be considered menial and unnecessary to the story because of the need to cut down space.
As newspapers make the transition to the internet, maybe it's not such a bad thing for those working the news.
As talked about in today's lecture, more and more newspapers seem to be dropping print editions and becoming either partially or exclusively news websites. And while online news brings new challenges for newspaper staffs, it brings one special luxury: space. While with print editions newspapers had to count their characters, inches and words, in the digital world all of this counting can go down the drain (unless papers pay writers per word).
Sure the internet has costs like bandwidth, but characters take up a relatively insignificant amount of bandwidth. This brings a number of luxuries to writers and editors. No longer does and editor have to create headlines that have to be not only attractive but short at the same time. Now editors can create headlines that pop, attract attention and adequately describe the story without the need for cutting out words, characters or spacing.
Likewise, writers of stories can now disregard word limits. They can take the time to fully develop stories. They can include information that might otherwise be considered menial and unnecessary to the story because of the need to cut down space.
As newspapers make the transition to the internet, maybe it's not such a bad thing for those working the news.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Swearing in News Part II
So I already wrote on swearing in news stories once before, but since we just talked about it in class I figured I'd continue the discussion on it a bit. I really don't understand the big deal with swearing in papers. I guess it can turn off some readers, which wouldn't be good for circulation; nevertheless, I think since swearing is a pretty natural part of speech that it's important enough to be included.
Like the kid in lecture said last Monday, I too most avidly read GQ, and I read it a lot more thoroughly than a typical newspaper. I also read Maxim and Esquire. So I never really thought about swearing in journalism until the whole big deal came about with the Cheney quote. But news sources remain strict about the use of swearing in their publications. My question is why do readers become to enraged with papers using curse words?
It seems very hypocritical for readers to be offended by swearing in newspapers when most of them probably frequently swear in their every day speech. To me, it seems limiting swearing in newspapers is also limiting freedom of speech, because it's not even supressed by law. I learned this last semester in J411. Since most children can't and don't read newspapers it's not technically considered to be obscene or indecent to use foul language in papers.
I am being extremely objective about this becuase I don't even really swear in my everyday speech, so that must mean I have to be right about my opinion...right?
Like the kid in lecture said last Monday, I too most avidly read GQ, and I read it a lot more thoroughly than a typical newspaper. I also read Maxim and Esquire. So I never really thought about swearing in journalism until the whole big deal came about with the Cheney quote. But news sources remain strict about the use of swearing in their publications. My question is why do readers become to enraged with papers using curse words?
It seems very hypocritical for readers to be offended by swearing in newspapers when most of them probably frequently swear in their every day speech. To me, it seems limiting swearing in newspapers is also limiting freedom of speech, because it's not even supressed by law. I learned this last semester in J411. Since most children can't and don't read newspapers it's not technically considered to be obscene or indecent to use foul language in papers.
I am being extremely objective about this becuase I don't even really swear in my everyday speech, so that must mean I have to be right about my opinion...right?
Monday, March 9, 2009
Headlines
Headlines are one of the most important parts of a news story. They are the first things that readers' eyes are drawn to. They sit on the page in giant bold font and provide a very brief summary of what a story is about. Many times it is these headlines that make or break whether the story is read or not. So what happens when an editor gives a story a bad headline -- a headline that doesn't grab interest or a headline that doesn't have much to do with what the story is actually about?
I find myself asking why don't story writers have more input into headlines? Sure editors are trained at doing jobs like creating headlines and writers are trained at writing stories, but is headline writing really that difficult? I think I can create some great headlines for stories that would sometimes turn out better than professional editors who do the job. Is headline writing really that difficult? Is it really a skill one needs to master?
On the surface, I have to say no. I think story writers should have more input into creating headlines because who knows a story better than the person that has written it? Should they always be the ones creating their own headlines? Probably not. But they should at least take part in the creation of headlines with editors to avoid disasters such as creating headlines that really have nothing to do with the story.
I find myself asking why don't story writers have more input into headlines? Sure editors are trained at doing jobs like creating headlines and writers are trained at writing stories, but is headline writing really that difficult? I think I can create some great headlines for stories that would sometimes turn out better than professional editors who do the job. Is headline writing really that difficult? Is it really a skill one needs to master?
On the surface, I have to say no. I think story writers should have more input into creating headlines because who knows a story better than the person that has written it? Should they always be the ones creating their own headlines? Probably not. But they should at least take part in the creation of headlines with editors to avoid disasters such as creating headlines that really have nothing to do with the story.
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