The Complete Editor

Edward Mullins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317343486
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Subtopic: Schreib- & Präsentationsfähigkeiten

Filled with abundant exercises, The Complete Editor provides readers with many resources actively learn about copyediting, headline writing, decision-making, relationships with writers, graphic presentations, photo editing and layout and design. It also contains a separate chapter on legal principles that an editor needs to understand. This efficient and well-written text gives readers basic information about the essential topics at hand.

Chapter 1 The Job of the Editor

DOI: 10.4324/9781315662565-1

• The Job of the Editor
• Tools of an Editor
• The Making of News
• Beginning the Editing Process
• Modern Challenges
• Exercises

The St. Paul Pioneer Press shocked its readers—many of them avid fans of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers basketball team—on March 10, 1999, by publishing a story that exposed academic dishonesty by members of the team and its coaches. The story, which had been weeks in the making, appeared in print just one day before the team was set to tip off against the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Many Gophers fans believed that the team had a chance to make it to the Final Four that year.

Instead, because of the story, four members of the team, two of them starters, were immediately suspended, and Minnesota lost to Gonzaga the next night, ending the hopes of many of the newspaper’s readers that their team would be part of the collegiate basketball elite.

The timing of the story had put the editors in a quandary. The story had been carefully researched by reporter George Dohrmann, who worked closely with sports editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz. The two had told no one else on the staff about it for several weeks, fearing that word would get out and that the Minneapolis Star, the Pioneer Press’s major competitor, would start its own investigation. Every important detail needed to be confirmed or documented in some way, and that took time. Sources were reluctant to talk, and when they did, it was hard to get them to respond immediately.

Finally, around March 1, as the basketball season was drawing to a close, the story came together. The major parts of the story were solid. An academic counselor had written papers for a number of players; coaches had been aware that this had happened; and the athletic department had covered it up when the NCAA had heard something and inquired about it. Dohrmann spent several days nailing down the final parts of the story, and by March 9 it was ready.

But then there was the question of timing. The next night, the Gophers would play their first tournament game. Should the newspaper hold the story until the tournament was finished or at least until the Gophers had been eliminated? Would that be fair to the readers—or the teams that the Gophers were playing? What if the newspaper held the story, even for a day, and the Star or some other news organization got wind of it and broke it first? A scoop that had taken a reporter months to put together would be gone.

In the end, there was little choice. The story had to be printed. When it was and the Gophers lost the tournament opener, the editors came in for some blistering criticism from their readers and from Minnesota partisans. Even then-Governor Jesse Ventura weighed in, accusing the newspaper of “sensational journalism” and timing the story to hurt the team.

Scoops, the watchdog role of the press, the drive to beat the competition, angering readers—the story of the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s exposure of the Minnesota cheating scandal has all of these elements of modern journalism. (A complete and fascinating account of this drama is at the Journalism.org web site, http://journalism.org/resources/education/case_studies/minnesota.asp.) At the heart of the drama are the editors. While a careful and persistent reporter researched and wrote the story, editors made key decisions every step of the way to pursue and publish it. And it was the editors who faced an angry public when the story broke.

Journalism is a collaborative effort, and the people who make that collaboration work are editors. From copy editors who help writers to craft the language of their reports to executive editors who make key decisions about the direction of their publication, editors are vital to the production of what we know as journalism.

The Job of the Editor

No one has a more important job in today’s media environment than the editor. Editors take on responsibilities far beyond those of a writer. Editors must not only be responsible for the work of reporters and writers but also have the whole publication in mind in going about their routines. They must understand the publication’s purpose and approach in handling information and serving audiences. Editors must know the language and style rules of their publication. They must lead, cajole, and sometimes force their writers into doing their best work.

Editors must understand context. They must be sensitive to the nuances of how information fits together. They must have enough memory about recent and ancient events that they can judge the nature, credibility, and legitimacy of the information they present.

Editors must be deeply steeped in the culture of journalism. As a part of their nature, they must understand the importance of accurate information and the generally accepted procedures for ensuring accuracy. They must value the faith, trust, and intelligence of their audience. They must know that hard work is the norm—something that the profession assumes but also rewards.

Editors must also lead. They must have the highest standards and expect others in their environments to meet those standards. Their very attitudes and approaches to the daily routine of editing should tell all those around them that honesty, integrity, hard work, devotion to accuracy, intelligence, and humanity are the norm.

The job of the editor is more than just fixing copy and designing a good page. The editor sets the standard and tone for the kind of journalism that is practiced at a publication. That is why the job of the editor is the most important.

Figure 1.1 E. O. Wilson

On the need for editors

Thanks to science and technology, access to factual knowledge is destined to become global and democratic…. What then? The answer is clear: synthesis. We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it and make important choices wisely.

E. O. Wilson

Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist and author

Washington Post, June 11, 1998

Every place that handles information and puts it into some form for distribution needs an editor, a person who understands the information, the procedure by which it will be processed, and the medium through which it will be disseminated. We might traditionally think of editors as working for newspapers or magazines, but editors—no matter what their job titles—are everywhere. This Information Age cannot do without them.

Tools of an Editor

The tools of an editor have changed drastically in a short period of time. Only a few years ago the principal tools were pencils, eraser, paper, scissors, and glue. A typewriter was required for rewriting or headline writing. For headline writing the editor would need a head count guide. For layout and picture sizing, picture wheels, dummy sheets, and pica poles (a printer’s ruler) were necessary.

Another tool that an editor needed was a set of copy editing symbols (see Appendix A). These symbols were used to correct copy in a standard and understandable way. One of the major purposes of hard copy editing was to prepare copy to be sent to a typesetter. In addition, an editor needed certain reference materials, such as a stylebook, a dictionary, a thesaurus, a city telephone directory, an atlas, an encyclopedia, and an almanac.

Today, these tools have been largely replaced by the computer. Editors use computers to call up stories, make changes in them, and save the files. They use computers to lay out pages, write headlines, and crop photos. Some computers even have reference materials, such as a dictionary, city directory, and stylebook, stored within their memory, so editors might not even need these books to sit on their desks. And, of course, editors today also have the Internet, a potential reference gold mine.

Although the tools of editing have changed a great deal, the most important tool of editing has not changed: The brain is the editor’s ultimate tool. If an editor does not use that tool, all the physical aids in the newsroom will not help.

Editors must have agile minds. They must have a wide assortment of facts and concepts they can call up for instant use. They must know history and literature. Their knowledge of grammar and punctuation must be thorough. They need not be expert spellers (although it certainly helps), but they must be able to spot and question possible misspellings. They should know their communities geographically and socially. They must know where to get information as well as a reporter does; many editors spend a good deal of their time developing their own sources.

Editors must be able to find mistakes and to question what they do not understand. If an editor does not understand something in a story, few readers will. Editors must also be able to spot errors in logic or lapses in common sense. They should be wordsmiths, people who not only know how to use words precisely but also have a feel for the language and a love for good writing.

In addition to all of these traits, editors must have in their heads a clear idea of what kind of publication they are producing. They must know what is and what is not appropriate, what similar or opposing publications are doing, and the ins and outs of their own operation. Editors must edit with readers in mind, and to do that, they need some information on who the readers are and what they expect from the publication.

The editor described here is not superhuman. In fact, many such editors exist on many publications. But they did not become editors of high caliber overnight. For most it took years of hard work and concentration to acquire the tools of a good editor. And for all such editors maintaining and adding to those tools is a matter of constant effort. Students who wish to become editors must begin now by sharpening their skills and expanding their knowledge and sensitivity.

The Making of News

News does not happen naturally. It is the result of decisions made by journalists, particularly editors. Editors decide what events their news organizations will cover and what events will be ignored. Something mundane or routine can become a major news event because of the decisions of a few editors and news directors. A similar event (and possibly one that is more important) might be passed over completely.

The decisions about what is and is not news are based on some traditional news values that are widely shared in the field of journalism. Beginning students need to understand these values, for they are the basis upon which journalists decide whether or not an event is news. It should be noted that not all information that editors handle is news in the strictest sense. Much publication content is just useful information, such as library hours and bus schedules. Anything that an editor handles, however, deserves his or her best effort. Millions of events occur in our society every day. Only a few of them are selected by editors, and at least one of the following criteria must be present for an event to be classified as news.

Impact. Events that affect people’s lives are classified as news. The event itself might involve only a few people, but the consequences may be wide ranging. For example, if Congress passes a bill to raise taxes or if a researcher discovers a cure for a form of cancer, the action will affect large numbers of people. These events would have impact, and they would be considered news.

Timeliness. Timeliness is a news value that is common to almost all news stories as well as to the useful information previously mentioned. Timeliness refers to the recency of an event. Without the element of timeliness most events cannot be considered news. For example, a trial that occurred last year is not news; a trial that is going on right now could be news. How much time has to elapse before an event can no longer be considered news? There is no specific answer to that question that will apply in every case. Most events that are more than a day to a day and a half old are not thought to be news. (Look in today’s newspaper or watch a television news program to see whether you can find a news story about an event that occurred two days ago.)

Prominence. Prominent people make news, sometimes even when they are doing trivial things. The president of the United States is a prime example. Whenever he takes a trip, even for purely personal and private reasons, his movements are covered in great detail by the news media. The president is a prominent and important person. Anything he does is likely to have an impact on the country, and people are interested in his actions. The president is not the only example of a prominent person who often makes news. Movie stars, writers, athletes, advocates of social causes—all of these people make news simply because they are well known. Or are they well known because they made news? Communication scholars would say both.

Proximity. Events close to home are more likely to be news than the same events elsewhere. For example, a car wreck that kills two people on a road in your home county is more likely to be reported in the local news media than the same kind of wreck a thousand miles away. We are interested in the things that happen around us. If we know a place where something goes on, we are more likely to picture that event and have a feeling for it and for the people involved.

Conflict. When people disagree, when they fight, when they have arguments—that’s news, particularly if one of the other news values, such as prominence, is involved. Conflict is one of the journalist’s—and the reader’s—favorite news values because it generally ensures that there is an interesting story. One of the reasons courtroom trial stories are so popular with newspaper readers as well as with television watchers is that the central drama involves conflict: competing forces, each vying to defeat the other.

The bizarre or unusual. That which rarely happens is sometimes considered news. There is an adage in journalism: “When a dog bites a man, that’s not news; when a man bites a dog, that’s news.” The adage refers to events that are relatively unimportant or that may involve obscure people, but they are interesting to readers and they enliven a publication. For example, it is not news when someone’s driver’s license is revoked (unless that someone is a prominent person); it is news, however, when the license that is revoked belongs to a person called “the worst driver in the state” because that person has had twenty-two accidents in the past two years.

Currency or trends. Issues that have current interest often have news value, and events surrounding those issues can sometimes be considered news. For example, a panel discussion of doctors might be held in your community. Normally, such a discussion might not provoke much interest from journalists. However, if the discussion topic were “The Morality of Abortion,” the news value of the event would change, and there would likely be a number of newspaper, radio, and television journalists covering it. Issues with this value come and go, but there are always several such ...