C H A P T E R

T H R E E

Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom This chapter at a glance • Accuracy is every editor’s first and most fundamental responsibility. Accuracy requires vigilance, focus and a familiarity with resources where facts can be checked. • Copy editors prepare a story by working from large blocks to small ones— from the story’s organization to its details of grammar and style. • The basic structure for news stories in print and online is the inverted pyramid. It summarizes the crucial facts at the top and places less important information at the bottom. Broadcast stories follow the conversation model, which may begin with a summary but then flows more informally. • Numbers give news stories authority and depth, but they present risks that editors must take special care to recognize and avoid. • Copy editors use an ensemble of tools that range from traditional editing symbols and reference books to online resources and specialized software.

The News Is in the Details As you followed the bridge collapse in Chapter 1 and the shooting at the U.S. Capitol in Chapter 2, you saw some editors keeping an eye on the big picture. What needed to be covered? How should that coverage be organized? How would words, pictures and graphics work best together? Who was the audience for this news? 50

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 51

But as each story took shape, another group of editors joined the effort. They made sure the coverage answered smaller but no less crucial questions. Who was involved, and were they fully identified? Exactly what happened, in what order, and when? Where? How and why did these events take place? Who or what was to blame? Were all the facts accurate? Were they complete? Was the account of events clear, consistent and compelling? The big picture depends on precisely such details, and the editors who made certain that they were in place were doing a job every bit as essential to the media’s mission and the public interest as the editors who were directing the coverage. Those detail-oriented editors were copy editors. Many of them were young journalists in their first editing jobs, making their mark with well-developed word skills, a strong sense of news judgment and a flair for organizing and presenting the news. If you become an editor, your first position may well be that of copy editor. Your job will be to improve the stories reporters have submitted and to prepare and package those stories for publication or broadcast. If you are interested in writing or some other non-editing aspect of communications, copy editing skills will help you hone your talents and give you insight into how the news process works. And if you plan to be a broadcast journalist, you’ll find that while some of the technical and style rules are different on the air, most copy editing principles translate easily from one medium to another. Ed Bliss, remembered by the pioneer CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite as “perhaps the greatest of broadcast editors,” argued for six decades as an editor, producer and teacher of broadcast news that the distinction between print and broadcast standards was mostly a false one. “Accuracy is still accuracy, fair is still fair, and good writing is still good writing and will be forever,” Bliss said. In this and the next two chapters, you will begin to develop the skills that copy editors bring to the job. Whatever the story, from shattering events on the world stage to student government meetings, from music festivals to high school baseball games, and from complex accounts of new technology to simple profiles of everyday people, those skills remain constant.

Skills for Today’s Copy Editor In every field and in every medium, copy editors are concerned with the things large and small that determine the integrity and appeal of the news report. They help the audience access and understand the news quickly and easily. They ensure that the news is reported in fair and accurate fashion. And they make certain that what is written and published or broadcast reflects standards of consistency and reliability. These goals require that copy editors bring intelligence, focus and care to the task, but good intentions are not enough. The job is too big. It also requires that copy editors apply an ensemble of skills and tools to news stories before they reach the public. For example, experienced copy editors will automatically reach for a Congressional Directory when checking to see how Sen. Tom Daschle spells

I N S I G H T

John McIntyre

The Baltimore Sun When you take your place among the ranks of copy editors, you will join that select group of people who would rather be right than president. You will work among some of the smartest people in the newsroom, people whose love of language and broad range of knowledge are unmatched. Among them, you will develop an esprit de corps, sometimes expressed in gallows humor, that will carry you through the dry places. You will find that the work you do demands an unusual combination of skills and an uncommon temper-

ament: a combination of mild obsessive-compulsive disorder (expressed as a determination to establish accuracy, order and consistency where they did not exist before) and that quiet sense of superiority that is gratified by the correction of other people’s mistakes. In headline writing, you will develop a skill that combines the mastery of Scrabble with the composition of haiku. And though your masters may never fully recognize or acknowledge their utter dependence on you or your invaluable contributions to your publication, you will know at the end of the day that you have left things better than you found them.

It is not just a job; it is a calling. Welcome aboard. John McIntyre, assistant managing editor of The Sun and president of the American Copy Editors Society, wrote this introduction to the copy desk as a seminar participant at the Poynter Institute. Used with permission.

his name, whether he is from North or South Dakota, and whether he is a Republican or Democrat. They will ask whether data should be a singular or plural noun in a story about breakthrough in health research, and reach for a stylebook or dictionary to find out. They will be skeptical of a lead that claims an overwhelming majority of students on campus oppose indoor smoking restrictions when only one such opponent is mentioned in the story. In fact, a good copy editor is willing to shine the light of news judgment on every aspect of a publication or broadcast. Is the lead story truly the most important news of the day? Will the video of a soldier’s body on the battlefield offend some viewers? Is the headline on a story about poverty too cute for such a serious subject? Is it fair to devote a 60-second feature to a celebrity drug bust when a three-month charity drive by a local neighborhood gets 15 seconds? Does the story on the firing of a controversial radio “shock jock” balance statements from all sides? Those questions may have different answers every day. There are few absolutes in journalism. But there are intelligent and well-considered answers to every such question. The first step in providing those answers is reading or viewing each story carefully and critically.

The Story from the Outside In You know from your own writing experience that when things are flowing, the general ideas and broad outline tend to come first. You get your thoughts down as quickly as possible. When the rush of inspiration slows, you go back and look at 52

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 53

your words with a more critical eye, thinking about examples and organization. Is everything there and in the right place? Finally you focus on the details. Do you need to check this or that fact, name, date? Is everything spelled correctly? Are the sentences clear, grammatically correct and polished? This writing sequence is a useful model for copy editing as well. Following it allows the editor to “think with” the writer and consider the story from the outside in, in a sequence that saves time and avoids dead ends. The number of steps varies, depending on the editor’s experience and the amount of time available. But to see the process in detail, let’s begin by looking at it in slow motion, in six distinct steps. • Read for understanding. Read or view the story thoroughly and make sure you understand it fully. Is the information complete? Does the story tell you what you want and need to know? Does it tell you who, what, when, where, why and how? Does it also tell you why it all matters—the “so what” of the story? • Read for organization and focus. Does the lead offer the most important or appealing information? Is the lead quickly supported and amplified by what follows, or does it dangle there alone, twisting in the wind? Does each paragraph focus on a single idea? Does the story unfold logically and maintain your interest? Are transitions clear and simple? Should facts and angles buried deep in the story be moved higher? Reading a well-organized story is like driving on a straight, open road in bright sunlight. You can’t get lost. Reading a jumbled story is like wandering the back roads at night with one headlight. You’re seldom sure exactly where you are and suspect you’re going in circles. • Read for accuracy. Are names, addresses and titles correct? Check them against reliable references such as phone books, city directories and government or business guides. Double-check locations and directions against a good map or atlas. Be wary of ages and other numbers; make sure they add up and make sense in the context of the story. Double-check phone numbers against a phone book; if possible, call them yourself. Double-check and test Web addresses and links as well. Many sites change URLs or disappear altogether, and even when they don’t, mistakes are common and can be embarrassing. Plenty of reporters and editors over the years have sent readers and viewers to whitehouse.com for government information, only to discover too late from both amused and outraged callers that it is a pornographic site. (The White House Web site is whitehouse.gov.) Accuracy involves less tangible questions, too. Are the facts consistent with one another? Does the story keep a sense of balance and proportion, or does it jump to conclusions? Does it logically connect cause and effect? Facts in isolation mean little; news takes its meaning from the pattern of facts. • Read for grammar, spelling, punctuation and style. Use your computer’s grammar- and spell-check programs, but only as a backup to your own skills and resources. Electronic correction programs simply don’t pick up everything. When you have the slightest doubt about a spelling, a meaning or a punctuation

54 Part One Approaching the Story

mark, reach for your stylebook or dictionary. (Lists of other useful Web and book resources appear later in this chapter.) • Read for language and sentence structure. Is the prose clear and rhythmic? Is the language precise? Are sentences too long and complex for easy reading? Is there enough variation in sentence length and structure to maintain interest? Are quotations used effectively? Is it always clear who is speaking? Do all pronouns have clear antecedents? Does the writer resort to jargon? Keep your audience in mind as you ask these questions. A general-interest broadcast, newspaper or magazine should keep language simple and most sentences short, in order to speak to an audience of all ages and education levels. A Web site aimed at a more educated audience can offer more variation. And a technical publication for professionals can use terminology that would be regarded elsewhere as hopeless jargon. The key is to make sure that your readers or viewers can understand. • Proofread. When your editing is complete, take a minute to walk away and clear your head of the story. Then return with fresh eyes and absorb it one final time. Note the changes you made. Have they improved and clarified the story? Check your changes against the original story to make sure that you have not introduced inaccuracies. At the same time, try to return to the mindset you brought to the first reading. Think of yourself again as a member of the news audience. Is it compelling? Is it complete? Is it right? Is it ready? Real life in the newsroom, with its deadline pressures, rarely allows for five or six separate readings of a story. Working editors learn quickly to combine the tasks outlined above into two or three readings, or even a single reading for short, simple stories. Kate Harrington, an online copy editor for InfoComm News & Information Network, said she typically gives a story two readings. She then passes it on to a second copy editor and her managing editor for additional looks. “The most important thing: Take your time,” she said. “Although deadlines might be short and sometimes immediate, I never rush over something just to get it done. I consider myself responsible for that news if I’m the last one who edited it. I want it to be as clean as possible to reflect that I’m a consistent and thorough editor.” No matter how many readings you give a story, think of your work as a series of distinct steps. Breaking the process down into individual tasks allows you to focus on one problem at a time and make repairs in a logical order. Working from large blocks of the story to smaller ones—from the big picture down to the details—is also more efficient. If you begin by correcting the grammar and checking the facts in a long, poorly written story, you may be wasting time tinkering with parts of the story that will have to be revised or even discarded. Why bother?

The Copy Editor at Work Let’s see how a copy editor used the steps outlined above to edit an actual story. This short account of competition in the 1996 Olympics comes from The Wash-

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 55

WEB SITES FOR COPY EDITORS •

•

www.copydesk.org. The home site of the American Copy Editors Society features resources, tips, contests and quizzes as well as regular updates on ACES activities. www.copyeditor.com. This site is from McMurry Publishing, which puts out the Copy Editor newslet-

ter. Most of the site’s online services require a paid subscription, but a sample issue is available free. •

www.theslot.com. Created by Bill Walsh, national news copy chief of The Washington Post, the Slot is a focused, often funny site that offers essays, tips and general information on the copy editor’s job.

ington Post’s online site, washingtonpost.com. Here is the news copy as it was prepared by a student intern and submitted to the copy editor, followed by an explanation of how the story was edited each step of the way: Olympic 100-meter champion Gail Devers breezed through the first round of the 100-meter hurdles Monday, easily winning her heat to advance to Monday night’s second round with the third-fastest of the qualifiers at 12.73. Devers is trying to atone for her stumble at the 1992 Olympics, when she was headed for a sure victory but crashed into the final hurdle and crawled across the line in fifth place. Russia’s Yelena Ninikolayeva won the Olympic gold medal in the women’s 10-kilometer walk Monday in 41:49. Elisabetta Perrone of Italy won the silver in 42:12. The bronze medal initially was awarded to China’s Gao Hongmiao, but she was disqualified for a rules violation and the medal was given to Wang Yan of China, who had finished in 42:19.

Step 1: Reading for Understanding. A first read shows that this brief story is what it should be: highlights of women’s track events in Atlanta, with emphasis on what is likely to most interest American readers—the progress of U.S. sprinter Gail Devers. But the story also mentions three other events without any transition, and it’s somewhat difficult to read.

Step 2: Improving the Organization and Focus. Part of the problem is that the story is a single paragraph. It should be recast as four separate paragraphs, each of which focuses on a single idea. The first is about Devers winning and advancing; the remaining three are about Devers’ 1992 experience, the result in the 10-kilometer walk and the disqualification. In addition, a brief, clear transition is needed between the second and third paragraphs so that readers know the story has moved on to another topic. With those changes made, the story now looks like this: Olympic 100-meter champion Gail Devers breezed through the first round of the 100-meter hurdles Monday, easily winning her heat to advance to Monday night’s second round with the third-fastest of the qualifiers at 12.73. Devers is trying to atone for her stumble at the 1992 Olympics, when she was headed for a sure victory but crashed into the final hurdle and crawled across the line in fifth place.

56 Part One Approaching the Story

In other events, Russia’s Yelena Ninikolayeva won the Olympic gold medal in the women’s 10-kilometer walk Monday in 41:49. Elisabetta Perrone of Italy won the silver in 42:12. The bronze medal initially was awarded to China’s Gao Hongmiao, but she was disqualified for a rules violation and the medal was given to Wang Yan of China, who had finished in 42:19.

Step 3: Editing for Accuracy. The copy editor now checks names, times and events against the official Olympic site on the World Wide Web. Numbers that raise any suspicion can be rechecked against a second source, the Olympic archives from past track events. The details of Devers’ 1992 fall are checked against the Olympic track and field preview posted online by washingtonpost.com. The story is accurate. The intern did excellent work in handling numbers, unfamiliar names and background facts. Step 4: Editing for Grammar and Style. Now the copy editor begins the up-close work of line-by-line corrections and improvements. She makes sure that sentences are grammatically sound, that the story meets stylebook standards and that no words are wasted. Is the term “100-meter” needed twice in the first sentence? The copy editor doesn’t think so, but it’s a judgment call, so she gets a second opinion from the sports desk. The editor there agrees. Several other unnecessary words and phrases are tightened or deleted as well. For example, “with the third-fastest of the qualifiers at 12.73” becomes “third-fastest at 12.73.” The stylebook confirms that “gold medal,” “silver medal” and “bronze medal” are not capitalized. It also confirms that the times in the story are written correctly: Seconds and hundredths of a second are separated by a decimal point, but in the longer race, minutes and seconds are separated by a colon. Here’s the story at this point: Olympic champion Gail Devers breezed through the first round of the 100meter hurdles Monday, easily winning her heat to advance to Monday night’s second round, third-fastest at 12.73. Devers is trying to atone for her stumble at the 1992 Olympics, when she was headed for a sure victory but crashed into the final hurdle and crawled across the line in fifth place. In other events, Russia’s Yelena Ninikolayeva won the gold medal in the women’s 10-kilometer walk Monday in 41:49. Elisabetta Perrone of Italy won the silver in 42:12. The bronze medal initially was awarded to China’s Gao Hongmiao, but she was disqualified and the medal was given to Wang Yan of China, who finished in 42:19.

Step 5: Editing for Language and Sentence Structure. The writing has already been improved to some degree in the previous step. Now, however, the copy editor turns full attention to polishing the prose. First, she’s bothered by the term “atone for” in the second paragraph. It implies that a serious sin has been committed. Isn’t that a little harsh for a fall in a race? She changes it to “recover from.”

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 57

TIPS FROM A PRO Pat Reilly, a veteran editor with The Washington Post, offers this advice to novice copy editors as they handle stories: •

Set priorities. Organization is the key to effective and efficient copy editing.

•

Read first for a general understanding of the story. “Does it make sense? Who are the principals in the story? Can the reader follow?”

•

“Have the confidence to look for holes.” Good editors see what’s missing as well as correcting what’s there.

•

Make yourself a member of the audience. “It’s the old idea that the editor is the first reader,” Reilly said. “Remember that the reporter has been with the story for hours and hours”—the editor provides a fresh point of view.

•

Save the small stuff. Fine-tune the story, addressing such issues as grammar and spelling, only after you’ve handled the bigger questions about the story’s scope and organization.

•

Most important, be willing to question every fact. “It’s a higher order of thinking that ultimately makes things better,” Reilly said.

Next, the copy editor turns to a more elusive issue. With such a dramatic subject as Olympic competition and a star athlete’s comeback, why does the story seem to lack much punch? She spies a common problem: a lack of variation in sentence length. Leads in particular should be short and direct. But the sentences that make up the first, second and fourth paragraphs are 30, 34 and 28 words long—nearly identical, and too long for many people in a general audience to read easily. The many numbers and unfamiliar names in the story add to the reader’s burden, making shorter sentences crucial. Fortunately, the copy editor can fix the damage without radically altering the reporter’s work. She simply breaks two of the sentences into shorter pairs, making only slight changes in wording. She leaves the second paragraph alone—a touch of variety in a story now told mostly in short, rhythmic sentences. It’s ready for the final step, proofreading. Compare the final version of the story with the original: Submitted Story

Edited Story

Olympic 100-meter champion Gail Devers breezed through the first round of the 100-meter hurdles Monday, easily winning her heat to advance to Monday night’s second round with the third-fastest of the qualifiers at 12.73. Devers is trying to atone for her stumble at the 1992 Olympics, when she was headed for a sure

Olympic champion Gail Devers breezed through the first round of the 100-meter hurdles Monday, easily winning her heat. She advances to Monday night’s second round, thirdfastest at 12.73. Devers is trying to recover from her stumble at the 1992 Olympics, when she was headed for a sure

58 Part One Approaching the Story

victory but crashed into the final hurdle and crawled across the line in fifth place. Russia’s Yelena Ninikolayeva won the Olympic gold medal in the women’s 10kilometer walk Monday in 41:49. Elisabetta Perrone of Italy won the silver in 42:12. The bronze medal initially was awarded to China’s Gao Hongmiao, but she was disqualified for a rules violation and the medal was given to Wang Yan of China, who had finished in 42:19.

victory but crashed into the final hurdle and crawled across the line in fifth place. In other events, Russia’s Yelena Ninikolayeva won the gold medal in the women’s 10-kilometer walk Monday in 41:49. Elisabetta Perrone of Italy won the silver in 42:12. The bronze medal initially was awarded to China’s Gao Hongmiao, who was disqualified. The medal was given to Wang Yan of China, who finished in 42:19.

Would you have edited the story a little differently? No doubt. Copy editors apply the news values in somewhat different ways, and every editor has a unique sense of what will appeal to the audience. Each can bring a creative flair and an individual touch to the task. On the other hand, some things remain constant from editor to editor. One is the desire for accuracy, reliability, clarity and consistency. Another is the understanding that a well-written news account is more than a list of facts. It is a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end—a shape that gives the facts meaning. The remainder of this chapter introduces the skills and tools a copy editor uses to improve story organization and ensure accuracy. The two chapters that follow expand on the final two steps of the story-editing process: grammar and graceful writing.

Organization: The Shape of the Story Perhaps you have been part of a phone conversation such as this: Chris: Hi, Lisa? This is Chris. Listen, I’ve had a little accident with your car. Lisa: Oh, no! Chris: Yeah, but nobody’s hurt and the damage isn’t too bad—just a broken taillight and a little dent in the back. My insurance will cover it. Lisa: You’re sure you’re all right? What happened? Chris: I’m OK, really—just took a little jolt. I was coming down College Drive about 15 minutes ago when a dog ran out in front of me there at the corner where the tennis courts are— Lisa: Lakefront Boulevard? Chris: That’s it. So this dog runs out, I throw on the brakes, I miss the dog but the guy in the SUV behind me can’t stop in time. Bam! From the moment the dialogue begins, the driver’s account falls into a pattern. He does not start by relating the events in the order they actually happened. Instead, he summarizes the most important news first: I was in an accident, but I’m

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 59

not hurt. Then he turns to key secondary details: The damage was minor, and I’m insured. Only then does he tell the story in chronological order. The driver would hardly think of himself as a journalist, but at the moment that’s what he is. He is delivering important news, and he unconsciously organizes that news in a way that best serves his “audience”—the car’s owner—and gives the facts meaning. In print journalism, the most basic way of telling news stories takes just this form. In broadcast and online news, the priorities shift slightly but the foundation is the same: Give the key facts, then fill in the blanks. If you have studied newswriting and reporting, you have some familiarity with this way of telling stories, but another look from the editor’s perspective is worth your time.

The Inverted Pyramid and the Summary Lead Picture an upside-down pyramid, broad at the top, narrowing toward the bottom. Imagine it filled with information. The big, important facts lodge at the broad top; supporting details float in the middle; smaller bits and pieces collect at the bottom. The inverted pyramid is not without its critics, but it has served as the most popular and versatile way of organizing newspaper stories for more than a century. The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in a blue Texas sky Saturday, killing the seven astronauts aboard and confronting a stunned nation with its second space disaster in 17 years. Just minutes away from landing in Cape Canaveral, Fla., the shuttle was 40 miles up, in a seemingly routine re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere, when the crew’s radio transmission fell silent at 9 A.M. Video shot by news photographers and amateurs in Texas at the same moment showed fragments falling away from the silver-white orbiter. Plumes of white smoke trailed behind. “Columbia is lost,” President Bush told Americans in a televised address shortly after consoling the astronauts’ families in a series of phone calls from the White House. Grim NASA officials opened an immediate investigation into the cause of the catastrophe. Ron Dittemore, the shuttle program manager, said one focus of the probe would be a piece of foam insulation that fell off the shuttle’s fuel tank during the launch 17 days ago and apparently struck the left wing.

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SUMMARY AND FEATURE LEADS: A Checklist for Editors Good leads both tell and sell. They provide key information, and they make an appeal to the news audience. However, the balance shifts according to the story and the audience. One way editors can evaluate leads and suggest revisions is to think about that balance. •

•

Summary leads (also called hard-news leads) work better when the news is breaking, is of great importance, or is of obvious and immediate impact. The editor’s job is to make sure the information is given clearly and quickly. Feature leads (also called soft leads and delayed leads) tend to work better when the news is older, more complex, more personal or involves a trend. In such cases, the editor should make sure the feature lead has an immediate appeal to the audience and that it provides a clear transition to the story’s most important facts.

•

Keep feature leads short. The audience should have a clear statement of the story’s focus and purpose—the nut graf in print, the main point in broadcast—within a few paragraphs.

•

Respect the audience. Modern readers and viewers have little time for games. Leads that rely on gimmicks, wordplay and withheld information only work when they are extremely well done. When they fail, they fail badly.

•

Encourage reporters to combine elements. Summary leads and feature leads are not isolated categories. A feature lead can often tell at least part of the basic news; a summary lead can appeal to the emotions by using dramatic language and offering a sense of how the story affects the audience.

(See Chapter 10 for more detailed coverage of editing features.)

The opening of this story, called the lead, summarizes the most urgent news and reflects the key news values emerging from the story. Such a lead is often called a hard or hard-news lead or a summary lead—hard-news because it delivers some or all of the major facts (who, what, when, where, how and why), and summary because it is brief, direct and includes just enough detail to give the audience a clear picture of what happened. Full details and explanations are saved for later in the story. An inverted pyramid story need not always begin with a summary lead. But over the decades, editors and reporters have found that they are a good match because a summary lead packs substance into the first sentences of a story. A good lead does more than simply present information, however. It also reaches out to the audience by showing the story’s appeal. It both “tells” and “sells” the story. Newspaper and online readers who aren’t grabbed by the first sentence or two of a story are likely to move on to something else. Television viewers and radio listeners who aren’t intrigued by a lead are apt to tune out. In any medium, a news story has only a few seconds or a few words to establish its importance and appeal.

Alternatives to the Summary Lead and Inverted Pyramid What changes from lead to lead is the balance between telling and selling. A summary lead emphasizes the information itself. When the nation goes to war or a space shuttle is destroyed in flight—even when tuition or taxes go up—the news has such impact that its appeal is self-evident. The best way an editor can sell such

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 61

a story is to make certain that the facts are presented clearly and dramatically. For that reason, summary leads are best suited to major breaking stories. Other stories, however, may have a different kind of value. A story about a child who is recovering from organ-transplant surgery, for instance, may not have direct impact on many readers or viewers, but it can weave an inspiring tale and even update the audience on new medical technology. Should such a story begin with a summary lead, or with a lead that appeals to readers’ interests in some other way? Compare them: Summary Lead

Feature Lead

Two-year-old Samuel Foraker is recovering at home in Dallas three weeks after receiving a new heart. His thankful parents, Herbert and Muriel Foraker, said Monday that they have new hope Samuel will live a long and healthy life.

A month ago, Samuel Foraker celebrated his second birthday with a toy truck he was too weak to hold and a chocolate cake he was too sick to eat. His mother had made the cake anyway. His father had brought the truck home anyway. They feared they might never get another chance. They’re overjoyed to be wrong.

This feature lead does some things a summary lead should not do. The key facts are scanty. The information is a month old. Readers are asked to wait before they are told the point. But which lead would persuade you to read the rest of the story? The feature lead would almost certainly draw more readers, not because it offers more information but because it provides a window on a compelling human drama. It says, in effect: Come on in. You’re about to hear a great story. In such a lead, the balance shifts from telling to selling. Chapter 10 will treat feature stories and leads in more detail. But as you begin editing basic stories, here are some key points to keep in mind when you move past the lead and into the body of the story: • Find the nut graf. That’s newsroom jargon for the paragraph that gives the essence or theme of the story. (Paragraphs are often called grafs in the newsroom, and this book will use that term from time to time.) In most inverted pyramid stories, such as the previous one about the space shuttle disaster, the summary lead does double duty as the nut graf. In feature stories, though, the nut graf usually comes later: A month ago, Samuel Foraker celebrated his second birthday with a toy truck he was too weak to hold and a chocolate cake he was too sick to eat. His mother had made the cake anyway. His father had brought the truck home anyway. They feared they might never get another chance. They’re overjoyed to be wrong. Three weeks after receiving a new heart at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, Samuel can look forward to a normal, healthy life, his doctors say. And, they add, cases such as his represent a major step forward in hearttransplant surgery for young children.

62 Part One Approaching the Story

BROADCAST: Hard Leads, Soft Leads and Set-ups Most good leads are short, simple and direct. In broadcast, however, simplicity is doubly important because listeners can hear the lead only once. They can’t backtrack or linger over nuances. Broadcast editors and producers make certain each story carries the kind of lead that makes it easy for listeners to focus. In addition, broadcasters write most stories on the conversation model rather than the inverted pyramid. As the term suggests, a good broadcast story unfolds in much the way one side of an informative conversation would: Each new statement provides an answer to the question raised by the previous statement. When the facts are simple and their impact is obvious, broadcast editors usually favor a hard lead: Three students are burned in a devastating dorm fire.

But when the key facts are complex or technical, especially if numbers are involved, a hard lead can make listeners’ eyes glaze over: Air Canada becomes the third airline to file for bankruptcy protection in the travel downturn following the nine-eleven attacks.

A one-sentence soft lead gives listeners a quick handle on this story before the details are introduced: Another airline fights to stay aloft in the shadow of nine-eleven. Air Canada becomes the third air carrier to seek bankruptcy protection as terrorism fears keep many travelers grounded.

work in print, but it throws far too much new information at a broadcast audience: The Student Senate approves new restrictions on campus groups that seek funding for political activities after complaints about last month’s antiwar protest.

A set-up lead frames this story by telling viewers and listeners what to expect: New rules and more paperwork for campus activists. Political groups that seek funding will have to follow guidelines approved today by the Student Senate. The crackdown comes after complaints about garbage and vandalism following last month’s anti-war protest.

Note that broadcast leads differ in some respects from their print counterparts. Broadcast leads are shorter. They are cast in the present tense to emphasize immediacy and timeliness, unless the present tense is awkward or misleading. And because broadcast leads should be conversational, they can occasionally—as in the last example above—be sentence fragments instead of whole sentences. Nevertheless, broadcast and print journalists can learn a great deal from one another. Broadcast leads, with their punch and emphasis on impact, are an effective antidote to sprawling, data-dense print leads that forget about their readers. And dramatic, tightly written print leads can remind broadcasters that a clever set-up is no match for clarity and simplicity.

Another complication arises when the impact or context of a story is not clear. This hard lead might

Broadcasters usually call this statement of the story’s theme the main point. By either name, however, the nut graf is the heart of the story. It should come early in the story so that readers have a clear idea where the story will take them. • Think in layers. Long, complex stories often work better when they are broken up into smaller segments, each addressing a different aspect of the main topic. For instance, an account of corporate versus “pirate” music-sharing technology on the Web might carry the basic news in a short mainbar. A sidebar, or

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 63

accompanying story, might focus on users’ reactions to both kinds of program and how their listening and CD-buying habits have been affected. A second sidebar could briefly describe different programs, from the paid services iTunes, Pressplay, MusicNet and Rhapsody to the free Gnutella, Morpheus and KaZaA. And a third could address the legal issues raised by the technology, including copyright-infringement lawsuits brought against music-sharing operations by such performers as Dr. Dre and Metallica. Layering is particularly important on the Web, where readers scan, move quickly and tend to bail out of long scrolls. (See “On the Web: Editing and Layering.”) • Think outside the print box. Newspaper editors, and some online editors, too often think almost exclusively in terms of words. Photos and graphics are afterthoughts, a little eye candy for print-shy readers with short attention spans. That attitude is self-defeating. Think visually as well as verbally as you move through a story. A long, complex explanation can paralyze an otherwise strong story. Can it be turned into a graphic? Dramatic quotes from witnesses at a crime scene may lose their impact if they are buried deep in a story. Can they be turned into quote boxes with photos of the speakers? Editors who think visually improve news accounts by letting the printed word do what it does best—tell the story. Editing for organization is about presenting the facts in a compelling and meaningful way. The editor’s next task is to examine the facts themselves.

Accuracy: The Editor’s Imperative G. Stuart Smith, news director at the University of Florida’s WUFT-TV, puts it simply: “Accuracy is everything. We have no credibility without it.” Journalists strive to get it right. But errors in news accounts abound. Why? Because admonitions from angry news executives to “be more careful” miss the point. Being careful is only part of being accurate. Mistakes come in different forms and require different remedies. The rest of this chapter is devoted to helping you develop the skills on which accuracy depends.

Typographical Errors Typos exist wherever words are printed on a page or screen. Certain typos seem to breed in news copy, however, because the same terms may appear dozens or hundreds of times a year in a publication. Editors who handle religion news, for instance, quickly learn to be vigilant for references to a couple of unlikely churches—Scared Heart and Untied Methodist, known to their irritated congregations as Sacred Heart and United Methodist. And despite all the concern about prostrate cancer in the media, it doesn’t seem to receive much attention from medical researchers; prostate cancer, however, is another matter. It’s equally embarrassing when friends turn into fiends, reason becomes treason or a story can’t decide whether someone is fasting or feasting. And perhaps if a power outage lasts long enough, it will eventually become a power outrage.

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Editors miss typos because they read what they expect to read rather than what is really there. Some tips for eliminating typos: • Proofread the words themselves. That may sound odd; what else would you read? In fact, though, editors often read ideas rather than individual words. When proofing for typos, put aside all questions of content, organization and style and concentrate on the shape of the words themselves. • Proofread in a different format. If you edit a story on the computer, print out a paper copy to do the proofing. If a printer isn’t available, try enlarging the type on the screen. Changing your visual field in some way will often flush typos out of hiding. • Share stories. Recall that Kate Harrington, the online copy editor for InfoComm News & Information Network, always passes her finished copy on to a colleague, then to her managing editor. “It’s important to have at least one other person look over your work,” she said.

Spelling Errors It is not necessary to memorize the spelling of every word in the dictionary in order to be an effective editor. Many great editors are lousy spellers. Their secret? They know they know they are lousy spellers. They don’t spot misspelled words. They spot words that may be misspelled. Then they check. • Know your problem words. You have been writing long enough to have a sense of which words you regularly misspell. Does that second i in liaison always trip you up? That second t in dietitian? Is it harrass and embarass or harass and embarrass? Begin to make a list of words and constructions, such as -er and -or endings, that give you trouble. When another reader or your spellcheck program catches you in an error, add the word to the list. With a little diligence, you will begin to recognize your problem words and blind spots. You can’t learn how to spell everything, but you can learn to recognize the kinds of words that pose a risk for you. • Know others’ problem words. As you work repeatedly with copy written by the same reporters, you will begin to recognize some of their spelling problems as well as your own. While some reporters are defensive about having their writing style criticized, most are grateful to have spelling and grammar errors brought to their attention; it may save them from later embarrassment. Let them know of chronic errors in a gentle note, not a “gotcha” memo. • When in doubt, check. The best editors are the ones who use the tools at hand regularly. The AP Stylebook includes many commonly misspelled words. If a suspect term is not there, a good dictionary is your next stop. Both should be close enough to reach without getting up. • Use your computer’s spell-checker, but know its limits. A spell-check program is designed only to compare the words on the screen with the words

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 65

ON THE WEB: Editing and Layering World Wide Web editors, sometimes called producers or coordinators, often have a larger hand in organizing stories than their print counterparts. Editors on the Web may be responsible for repurposing, the term for taking stories from a print or broadcast newsroom and adapting them for the Web. The key to editing and repurposing Web content is layering—organizing a story and related information in small linked pieces that users can navigate in a sequence that fits their interests. Layering is a recent term, but the process itself is not. In a rudimentary way, print editors have layered stories for generations: mainbars and sidebars, game stories and box scores, business stories and stocks listings. In fact, the inverted pyramid itself is a way of layering a story by summarizing the facts at the top and moving background details to the bottom. What’s new is that the Web allows layering to be much more extensive and interactive than ever before. On the Web, users are also choosers. Layering uses the Web’s strengths (linking, interactivity, archival depth) and minimizes its weaknesses (user impatience, poor readability compared to print). Here are 10 typical layers in a news story on the Web: •

Headline: Usually appears on home page along with other headlines. Links to story.

•

Summary or abstract: Can range from traditional summary lead to teaser for story. Usually, though not always, appears on home page with accompanying headline.

•

Lead: Tightly written summary or feature lead. Usually appears at top of complete story, often in enlarged type. Editors must take care that summary

and lead do not simply repeat each other but offer different angles on story. •

Complete story with links: Body of story is likely to be shorter than its print equivalent, since much background information is provided in links rather than in story text.

•

Multimedia elements such as photos, streaming video and audio: Still photos may appear on headline (home) page or with story. More extensive stillphoto packages, along with video and audio, are typically accessed through links on story page.

•

Interactive elements: These include online forums or Weblogs, e-mail to site and reporter, “agenting” software that allows users to set preferences, calculators, activities for students, etc.

•

“Deep data” such as graphics, transcripts of speeches and statistics: Links within story or on navigation bar take users to key background information.

•

Related stories and topics archived on site: Past stories and pictures collected by the news organization; sometimes available only as paid “premium content.”

•

Related stories and topics on other sites: Links to other media or original sources appear in story or on navigation bar.

•

Web-only content: Catchall term for a range of information and formats not offered in print or on the air: question-and-answer interviews, reporter commentary, Weblogs, streaming video and audio.

listed in the computer’s internal dictionary. When it finds a match, it moves on. It is not intelligent and it does not understand context. Do you know how many errors a standard spell-checker finds in this absurd sentence? No mat tour witch come pewter pro gram ewe chews, to many miss steaks and miss used words cane get threw a spell Czech her.

None. It recognizes every word. Counting on a spell-checker to catch all spelling errors is like playing the lottery. You might get lucky, but you’d be

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wise to have a more reliable source of income. Always use your spellchecker—it will catch some typos and occasionally bail you out of a jam—but never depend on it.

Vague and Inaccurate Terms Newswriting, especially for broadcast, should be conversational. But it also requires a greater degree of precision than everyday talk and informal writing. Words that might serve perfectly well in casual contexts often fall short of the standards of accuracy that journalism requires. Note that the following pairs and groups of words have related but not identical meanings. (You will find an extensive list of often-confused terms at the end of this book; Chapter 5 treats the appropriate use of technical terms and jargon.) citizen/resident immigrant/refugee/alien Arab/Muslim college/university Internet/World Wide Web evangelical/fundamentalist company/corporation government/regime

transsexual/transvestite doctor/physician prison/jail grant/scholarship stepsister/half-sister handgun/pistol/revolver suspected/arrested/charged Taliban/al-Qaida

Editors attune themselves to such distinctions to ensure that the language in news stories is clear and precise. While a muddled term sometimes does no serious harm, it also may have real consequences. It is crucial, for instance, to handle legal terms with absolute accuracy. A person may be suspected of a crime, accused of a crime, arrested in connection with a crime, charged with a crime, indicted on criminal charges, and arraigned on those charges—all before a trial even begins. Each term has a specific meaning and application. They must be used with precision, both in fairness to the people involved and to protect the news organization from libel suits. The law regards suspects as innocent until proven guilty. The media should do no less.

Basic Errors of Fact If Gertrude M. McDonald receives a scholarship or falls down the steps or is charged with hitting her husband with a big stick, and a news story tells us it was Gertrude N. Macdonell, the reporter has in effect made three errors. He or she has misspelled a name, has made the wrong person the subject of the story, and has failed to give the name of the person who should be in the news. A misspelled name is more than a misspelling. It is an error of fact. It is one of the most serious mistakes the media can make. It misrepresents the truth, erodes credibility and may even lead to a libel suit. Yet it is also one of the most common mistakes in the news business. Every editor eventually will pick up a phone and hear some variation on this rant: “You can’t even get my name right. How can I believe anything else you say?” It’s an unsettling call, not only because that caller is angry but also because he or she is right.

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Names, addresses and titles create problems for editors because there is no shortcut to catching and fixing them when they are wrong. Names take on a seemingly infinite variety of spellings; they don’t follow rules. The only way to minimize misspelled names and other basic errors is to check and recheck the facts against reliable sources. Here are some guidelines. • ‘Almost’ names. During the war with Iraq in 2003, two major news services filed stories comparing Saddam Hussein to infamous dictators of the past. They spelled the Iraqi president’s name correctly—then managed to misspell perhaps the most notorious name of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler, as Adolph. (Both quickly corrected the error.) Similarly, entertainment editors have to double-check their celebrity resources regularly to make sure they aren’t confusing the first names of rock star Courtney Love and TV star Courteney Cox. Thousands of more common names have variant spellings as well. Is Catherine Brown really Katherine Browne? Is John Smith Jon Smyth? Sara or Sarah? Stacy, Stacey or Staci? Mathews or Matthews? Never take the spelling of even a common name for granted. Reporters should always ask; editors should always check. • Second references. Reporters who get a name right on first reference may let down their guard when they mention it again. Make certain that an Everhardt in the lead of the story does not become an Everhart or Everheart in the seventh paragraph. Keep in mind that in some cultures, family names come first. Kim Jeong-nam is a Korean man whose family name is Kim and whose given name is Jeong-nam; on second reference, he is Kim. • Middle initials. Use middle initials when possible in identifying people who are not generally known to the audience. Middle initials are crucial in three kinds of hard-news stories: when legal issues are involved; when other identifying information, such as address and age, are incomplete; and when the name is otherwise so common that it could refer to many people. In each instance, the middle initial helps specify the person in the news beyond a shadow of doubt. • Addresses. Policies vary on whether and how addresses are used in stories. It was once standard to use the exact street addresses of the primary people and places in hard-news accounts. But many news organizations now believe that publishing house and apartment numbers is an unnecessary breach of privacy. Other news organizations make distinctions: specific addresses for criminal suspects, but only streets, blocks or neighborhoods for people in other kinds of stories. Addresses must be as accurate as possible within the limits of your newsroom’s policy. They reflect the news value of proximity: People want to know where something happened, and they will measure the importance of that event in part by its nearness to them. Addresses should always be checked against up-to-date phone books, city directories and maps. As with names, there is no shortcut.

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IMPROVING ACCURACY AND RE-ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY A national survey released a few years ago by the American Society of Newspaper Editors painted a disappointing picture of the media’s credibility in the minds of readers and viewers. While many complaints centered on perceived bias, sensationalism and insensitivity, one refrain was constant: too many mistakes. Here’s some of what the survey found: •

Fifty-five percent of respondents reported finding spelling and grammar mistakes “a few times a month” or more in their newspapers; 21 percent reported such mistakes “nearly every day.”

•

Forty-eight percent reported finding factual errors “a few times a month” or more; 23 percent reported such mistakes “more than once a week.”

•

Appointing fact checkers. Some copy editors in larger newsrooms spend most or all of their time as accuracy specialists. They double- and triplecheck such details as names, addresses and titles, as well as editing stories for grammar and spelling.

•

Developing accuracy teams. These groups of editors monitor errors, trace how they occurred and establish newsroom policies for minimizing them. “Error police” can help identify trouble spots outside as well as inside the newsroom. One accuracy team tracked repeated mistakes involving dates and times of events to one public relations volunteer who served several organizations.

•

Troubleshooting earlier in the reporting and editing process. While good copy editors are the traditional line of defense against inaccuracies, a number of newsroom managers and experts are now convinced that the copy desk, which gets stories last, is poorly placed to catch errors that occur while stories are being written.

•

Veto power for copy editors. If a story of dubious accuracy does make it as far as the copy desk, it may be too close to deadline for a full investigation of the problem. Copy editors in some newsrooms were once tacitly encouraged in such cases to “trust the desk editor” and move the story along. More newsroom managers are now giving copy editors the right to hold such stories for a closer look, and are applauding such caution even when it turns out to be unfounded. Accuracy, they say, is worth the wait.

Television fared even more poorly in the public’s judgment. When television and newspapers were compared, newspapers got the edge for higher standards of accuracy (47 percent to 42 percent) and more careful research (52 percent to 36 percent).

“Even seemingly small errors feed public skepticism about a newspaper’s credibility,” the editors’ group said in a report accompanying the study. That warning should be a reminder to editors in every field. Readers and viewers pay attention to the details, and they trust the news media with the big stories only when editors and reporters get the little things right. Many newsrooms have expanded their commitment to accuracy in a number of ways: •

•

Regular meetings on accuracy and related issues. The Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal, like many newsrooms, holds weekly “quality meetings” to analyze mistakes and prevent their recurrence. Editors at the Capital-Journal “point out errors to all involved, from the last person to handle a story to the person who made the error,” said Cindy McGowan, the paper’s news editor.

The ASNE survey, conducted by Urban & Associates of Sharon, Mass., was based on telephone interviews with 3,000 U.S. adults in April and May 1998. The margin of error was plus or minus 1.8 percent.

Addresses are also subject to strict style rules. Most print media follow the AP Stylebook in handling addresses. You should familiarize yourself with those guidelines early in this course; you’ll be using them often.

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 69

• Ages. Ages need not be used in every story, but some stories depend heavily upon them. They serve four important purposes. They are secondary identifiers when it is crucial to establish exactly who someone is, such as a crime suspect or accident victim. They are an important element of many professional profiles; the news audience will want to know a political candidate’s age, for instance, and sometimes—as in 73-year-old Bob Dole’s presidential race against incumbent Bill Clinton in 1996—age can be a factor in a campaign. They are a conventional part of obituaries. And they can add novelty to stories about interesting people. When KCRA-3 in Sacramento, Calif., asked 81-year-old marathon runner Helen Klein if she minded revealing her age in a 2002 television feature about her, Klein replied with a wry insight into the news: “Well, if I was 40, I wouldn’t get any attention at all.” • Titles and jobs. It’s a bureaucratic jungle out there. Public officials and others acting in an official capacity generally should be identified by exact title in news stories. On the other hand, some official titles are so labyrinthine that they hide more than they reveal. The governor’s chief senior assistant on public education policy and administration is better identified as the governor’s top school aide. Beware, though, of casual terms such as leader and boss. They tell little about someone’s actual powers and responsibilities. Accuracy in titles should strike a balance between specificity and the needs of a general audience. The AP Stylebook provides extensive guidance on how to use titles consistently, but the basic points are these: Capitalize a title that comes before a name, unless it is set off by commas as a descriptive term; do not capitalize a title that follows a name; and do not capitalize a title that stands alone. These examples correctly reflect AP style: Lewisville Mayor Juanita Lloyd spoke to protesters. The Lewisville mayor, Juanita Lloyd, spoke to protesters. Juanita Lloyd, the Lewisville mayor, spoke to protesters. The Lewisville mayor spoke to protesters.

Job names and descriptive phrases are not capitalized in AP style: attorney Trinh Michaels, actress Jennifer Kaplan, foreman Clifford Wells, professor Carla Johnson. • Precision in description. Be attuned to distinctions that may escape a casual reader or viewer but are essential to clarity. For instance, in some cities the mayor is the top policy-making executive; in others, he or she merely presides over the council, while executive duties are handled by a city manager. Royal figures are supreme rulers in some nations, symbolic remnants of an earlier age in others. In business and other institutions, a chairman or chairwoman may be anything from a figurehead to an omnipotent power. • Organization names. Use the spelling and punctuation the group prefers, even if it breaks AP style. When confronted with an unfamiliar organization,

70 Part One Approaching the Story

check its name and function against a business, government or academic directory or at a reliable online site. (A list of fact-checking resources appears near the end of this chapter.) Perhaps the most common source of error in handling news about unfamiliar organizations is the fact that very different groups have similar names. In order to appeal to a broad public (and, of course, to raise money), they draw on a limited pool of inspiring buzzwords. Thus an India-based treatment program for AIDS and substance abuse is called the Freedom Foundation; an organization dedicated to teaching citizenship and American history to schoolchildren is the Freedoms Foundation; and a group espousing libertarian political values is The Future of Freedom Foundation. Such similarities can breed confusion, so editors should include a brief description of any unfamiliar organization that appears in news copy. Descriptions are especially important when the organization is involved in political debates, social issues, polling, research or fund-raising activities where the group’s viewpoint or policies may influence the news. • Dates and Times. Errors involving when something happens are among the most common in the news. Publicity releases about community events often are written by volunteers who get key facts wrong or omit them altogether. It’s not really the newsroom’s fault when bad information is submitted for local calendars and listings, and few news organizations have the resources to doublecheck every such announcement. Unfortunately, the people standing in the rain outside the village community center on Sunday night, waiting for the annual chicken dinner that was served Saturday, don’t know that. They only know that they “saw it in the paper.” Editors should at least make certain that a phone number for information is published with listings of such events, and they should do a spot-check whenever possible. It’s easy, however, to check dates and times for consistency because the evidence of a mistake lies in the copy itself. Inverted pyramid stories are especially prone to error here because, as we saw previously, they are not usually told in chronological order. If a profile of a scientist notes that he won a Nobel Prize in 1976 and says eight grafs later that he was born in 1949, the dates are not impossible, but at least one of them is implausible; 27-year-olds do not generally win the Nobel Prize.

Historical and Artistic References One reporter, interviewing a well-known writer, asked the writer his favorite novel. Unfortunately, the reporter wasn’t familiar with the response, “Les Misérables,” the 19th-century novel by Victor Hugo. Not realizing the title was French, she heard—and reported— her subject’s favorite book as “Lame Is Rob.” In another favorite newsroom tale, an editor had to write a quick headline on a story about a controversial Smithsonian exhibit about the atomic bombing of Japan near the end of World War II. The editor noticed the name of the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, the Enola Gay, and, being cautious, recast it as “Enola Homosexual” for the headline.

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 71

Inaccurate historical and artistic references reveal that reporters and editors have not done their homework. The result is occasionally comical, as in the examples above. But even the funny oversights can be devastating to the credibility of a news organization. As with many accuracy issues, there is no simple trick to catching a wayward reference. Accuracy demands diligence. Names, dates, titles, quotations and attributions should be checked against reliable references in your library or on your desk. Fortunately, the World Wide Web, with its flexible search capabilities, makes it much easier to catch and repair such mistakes than it was a generation ago. Still, there is no substitute for a broad familiarity with history, the arts, the sciences and popular culture when editing. You are not expected to absorb the dates of every war, the characters in every Shakespeare play or the title of every Beatles album. But you will be a better copy editor and journalist if you also seek to become a generalist—one who has a working knowledge of a wide variety of subjects. Generalists aren’t experts or memory magicians, but they develop the insight to ask the right questions. One other facet of the editor’s dedication to accuracy lies outside the realm of fact-checking and language skills. This ability is so crucial—and so prone to misconceptions —that it deserves special consideration. It is the ability to handle numbers and basic calculations.

Numbers in the News Numbers are everywhere in the news. On a given day, numbers might play a key role in every story on the front page of the newspaper and every story in a radio or TV broadcast. Budgets, taxes, tuition, troop strengths, death tolls, vote totals, spending bills, interest rates, employment, the stock market, album sales, prices, polls, ages, dates, crowd sizes, health and medical news, every sports story, every food recipe, every weather report—all rely heavily on statistics or calculations. Yet many editors are afraid of numbers. When calculations turn up in a story, they pass the problem on to someone in the newsroom who “can handle math” or at least knows how to work a calculator. That’s ironic, because editors tend to think of themselves as highly logical creatures, and basic math is pure logic. Numbers can be interpreted in different ways, but they themselves always behave in the same way. If you can learn to handle a few basic concepts and calculations, you will be able to deal accurately and comfortably with most numbers in the news. (Chapter 11 gives more specialized information on polls and statistics.)

Percentage and Percent Percent is Latin for “in 100.” If a story says that state unemployment has decreased from 4.5 percent to 4 percent in the past three months, it is saying that while 4.5 of 100 work-ready people had no job three months ago, four people have no job now. A decrease from 4.5 percent to 4 percent is therefore a decrease of .5, or half a percentage point. That calculation is simple subtraction because

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both numbers refer to a scale of zero to 100; we can’t have unemployment any lower than zero percent or any higher than 100 percent. We are simply comparing the new number to the old one on an absolute scale. Such a change is called an increase or decrease in percentage points. However, we can also make the old number the point of reference, rather than using 100 as the point of reference. If we use the state unemployment figure from three months ago—4.5 percent—as our starting point, we can say that unemployment has declined by about 11.1 percent. We reach that figure by dividing the new figure by the old one—4.0 divided by 4.5 equals .88888, or just under .89—and subtracting the result from 1.00. The difference is slightly more than .11111, or about 11.1 percent. Such a change is called an increase or decrease in percent. Enter the politicians. The governor will hold a news conference announcing “a dramatic 11 percent plunge in unemployment following my new Work or Walk Initiative.” The governor’s critics will accuse him of “spinning the numbers” and scoff that “the actual decline in unemployment is just half a percentage point.” Both are right. Unemployment is down half a percentage point if we consider it on an absolute scale—100 percent of all work-ready residents. But it is down a more impressive 11.1 percent if we calculate it against the previous figure. The distinction shows how easily numbers in the news can be manipulated, and how important it is for editors to make sure that such numbers are presented in context.

Using Real Numbers with Percentage and Percent Whether we describe the change in unemployment as a percentage change or a change in percent, we are not telling the news audience how many real people are out of work. That’s because percentage and percent are proportions, not an actual head count. One simple way of providing the context that gives percentage and percent a real-life dimension is by including the actual numbers that they represent. If your state has 10 million work-ready residents and the unemployment rate has declined from 4.5 percent to 4 percent in three months, it means that 450,000 people were out of work then and 400,000 are out of work now. To an average reader, raw numbers alone may not mean much—it’s hard to get your head around 400,000 of anything—but they offer perspective in a story where percent and percentage are subject to partisan bickering. Sometimes, in fact, real numbers give a much clearer picture of things than percent or percentage. For instance, critics of tougher education policies pointed to a recent University of Michigan study as evidence that U.S. schoolchildren are forced to spend too much time on homework. The study showed that the average homework load on 6- to 8-year-olds had increased a remarkable 140 percent in about 20 years. That sounded brutal—until others pointed out, as the researchers had, that the real time spent on homework had actually increased from 7.5 minutes a night to 18 minutes a night.

Average, Mean and Median People who are not trained in statistics—which means most of us—take these three terms to mean basically the same thing: in the middle. That may be close

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 73

BOOKS AND WEB SITES FOR HELP WITH MATH AND STATISTICS •

www.math.com. Everything from basic arithmetic to advanced calculus is covered in this education site created by a software company, along with online calculators and a useful glossary.

•

www.notrain-nogain.org. The Numeracy Resources page of this journalism training site offers insight into common math, polling and statistics problems. The site was founded by Freedom Forum and is now operated by Dolf Els of Media24.

•

www.onlineconversion.com. Calculators at this site enable you to easily convert pounds to grams, decimals to fractions, acres to square miles, etc.

•

Paulos, John Allen. “A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.” Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1996. A prominent mathematician uses real news stories to explain how numbers and statistics are used in the news, and how they are often misused.

•

Wickham, Kathleen Woodruff. “Math Tools for Journalists.” Oak Park, Ill.: Marion Street Press, 2002. A brief, clear guide to the basic skills and concepts needed to handle the most common numbers-based stories. Includes useful drills and exercises.

enough for casual description, but precision in news accounts requires that editors make careful distinctions among them and make sure that the calculations used in stories are the ones that explain trends clearly and fairly. Average and mean are the same thing. To get a mean or average, simply divide a sum by the number of parts that contribute to that sum. If a basketball player scores 17, 14, 23, 19 and 12 points in a five-game span, her average is the total number of points, 85, divided by the number of games, five—a 17-point average. Averages are a useful way of presenting many kinds of numbers because they reduce complex information to clear, simple proportions. But they can mislead. If a small group of numbers is being averaged, a few extreme numbers can skew the result. If, for example, a news story about a pay raise for local police officers notes that the six cops in the small-town department already make an average salary of $38,000, many taxpayers are likely to question the need for a raise. But a simple average hides the fact that the police chief earns $64,000 a year, while another senior officer earns $52,000. The average salary for the rest of the department is only $28,000. A good editor would insist that the story include a median or a range of salaries for the department to provide a more balanced picture. A median is a middle point. It is found not by adding a group of numbers, but by arranging them from highest to lowest and finding the one in the middle. Medians avoid the skewing common to averages by limiting the impact of a few very high or very low numbers. A story for the campus TV station about how much time students in a dormitory spend online, for example, would almost certainly provide a more realistic picture of Internet use by using a median figure rather than an average. The reason? A few Net addicts never log off; their online marathons inflate everyone else’s time online. But if a median is used to depict

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the typical student, a 15-hour-a-day Internet habit carries no more weight than a 15-minute-a-day e-mail check at the other end of the scale. But median numbers can occasionally mislead, too. In some stories, the extreme numbers at the ends of the scale should carry full weight. This is especially true in stories about health and safety, where risks may not be constant or evenly distributed but are nevertheless real. A story about student drug and alcohol abuse might note that the campus health clinic treated a monthly median of just three drug and alcohol cases in the past year. But the real month-by-month numbers show spikes of more than 20 cases in September, December, January and May— the party months at the start and end of each semester. A median buries those worrisome numbers behind an equal number of slow months at the clinic when students are busy studying. By doing so, it hides a major health threat on campus.

The Power of Numbers Nearly every news story depends upon numbers in some way, but not every use of numbers in news stories requires an editor’s calculating skills. Times, ages, dates, dimensions and other simple numbers bring depth, authority and clarity to the news. Used carefully, such numbers give stories tangible appeal because they help the audience understand the dimensions and impact of the topic. A feature on day care needs to include statistics about working mothers, while an end-ofseason football roundup must offer won-lost, scoring and yardage totals. A mediocre story may point out that a university operates a large shuttle bus system; a good editor will revise the story—or better, help the reporter revise it—to show that the university’s bus system, with its 33 full-size buses and five vans, rivals many city bus systems in size. Like physical details that help the audience picture a scene or event, such numbers bring a sense of concrete reality to the story. At other times, numbers are themselves the news: a first mission to the moon, a third millennium, a 500th coaching victory. Used effectively, numbers tell stories in a unique way. They can even carry an emotional punch. This lead from Danny Freedman of The Associated Press uses a stark, understated series of numbers to capture the horror and scope of the 2002 sniper rampage around Washington, D.C.: Dead: 10. Tips: more than 138,000. Reward: $50,000 at first, then $500,000. Lives changed forever: countless ... Two suspects: John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17. The search: 22 days. Bullets fired: at least 14—taking 10 lives, wounding three, shattering a window. The bullet caliber: .223.

Tools for Today’s Editor If the skills you have observed so far seem a bit overwhelming, this closing section of the chapter should provide some reassurance. Editors don’t do it alone. They rely heavily on a number of tools and resources as they work. Some of these

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 75

tools are a few steps away in the newsroom library. Some are a few mouse-clicks away, online or on the computer desktop. Others are within reach on the editor’s desk. And many are closer still—in the working editor’s mind, where they have been committed to memory and used so often that they have become second nature. Let’s look at the editor’s most important tools and resources.

Copy Editing Symbols You probably are used to having papers returned with corrections and revisions written in longhand. If the changes are extensive, they may be hard to read; they are certainly time-consuming to write. Over the years, editors have developed a way to make the same alterations more quickly and clearly, by using simple markings to indicate that words, phrases or sentences should be moved, changed, inserted or deleted. Some editing students doubt the usefulness of such old-school symbols. Who needs them when a vast majority of corrections are made these days on a computer screen? Fair question. The answer is that the symbols still come in handy on a regular basis in the newsroom. Good editors learn to work on both the printed page—so-called hard copy—and the computer screen. The advantages to electronic editing are obvious: • It is faster by far. • It keeps the copy “clean,” allowing the editor to see the story in its current form at a glance. • It cuts the risk of error and confusion by eliminating the need to transcribe page corrections back into the computer version of the story. In addition, modern editing programs save earlier versions of a story and allow editors to highlight or otherwise indicate changes in copy, thus eliminating many of the problems that plagued the first generations of computer editors. Nevertheless, the ability to edit on paper, using the copy editing symbols, still has distinct advantages in many important situations: • A hand-edited story is more helpful to young writers and reporters. “Before” and “after” versions on a computer screen are difficult to compare at a glance, but a single page, plainly marked with corrections, makes clear what has been changed and how. • It is easier to check the organization of longer stories on the page. Editors can see the big picture more clearly when the entire story is in front of them. Having to scroll through a long story on the screen, or jump back and forth between sections, can be disorienting and lead editors to neglect the overall flow of a story as well as the transitions that link its sections together. • Screen editing can turn into overediting. The sheer ease of inserting and revising on the computer may tempt editors to write their own version of a story rather than improve it. Working on paper keeps editors in check by reminding them that part of their task is to respect the writer’s voice and approach.

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ONLINE SOURCES FOR CHECKING FACTS Editors often must check and double-check names, numbers and other facts on deadline. Most newsroom libraries include encyclopedias, atlases, government and business directories and other resources for factchecking, but they might be outdated or difficult to use. The Web and online databases offer another line of defense against errors. Here are some useful sites for finding reliable information: •

www.census.gov. The U.S. Department of Commerce portal to local, state and federal census information.

•

www.fedworld.gov. A government portal to millions of federal Web pages by category, topic and title.

•

www.stateline.org. News, issues and statistics on state government, education, courts, transportation, environment and more from the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

•

www.searchsystems.net. Locates public records by state, nation or keyword. This site from Pacific Information Resources links to more than 10,000 databases on everything from criminal and court records to licenses, businesses and missing people.

•

www.cdc.gov. Comprehensive and up-to-theminute public health information from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes health and safety statistics, current news about epidemics, reliable consumer advice and links to state and local health agencies.

•

reporter.umd.edu. Site for A Journalist’s Guide to the Internet, a well-organized and comprehensive guide to information sources and how to use them wisely. Compiled by Christopher Callahan of the University of Maryland journalism program.

•

www.assignmenteditor.com. This site, created by Jim Lichtenstein, a former editor for CBS and ABC, offers links to hundreds of research sites, media outlets, maps and images as well as a wide variety of other links to journalists. It color-codes all links

to distinguish between free and paid sites—a huge time saver. •

www.infospace.com. Offers several reverse directories that allow you to find a name and address if you know the phone number, to find all the residents of a street and to find e-mail addresses.

•

www.ire.org. Home page of Investigative Reporters and Editors. IRE’s massive library database requires a paid subscription, but the site’s Resource Center links to free information on thousands of topics.

•

www.refdesk.com/jourtool.html. The Refdesk site’s portal for journalists’ tools, including databases, journalism organizations and online publications. (The Refdesk home page offers thousands of less specialized but still useful reference resources.)

•

www.robertniles.com/data. A simple, easy-to-use guide to a wide range of reliable government and commercial databases from a senior producer of latimes.com.

•

www.nolo.com/lawcenter/statute/index.cfm. This legal research site for nonspecialists provides state and federal laws, court cases, definitions and help in deciphering legalese.

•

www.vote-smart.org. This public-interest site from Project Vote Smart tracks current candidates, the status of legislation, votes of Congress members, appropriations and a wide range of other federal and state information.

•

www.followthemoney.org. A massive database on campaign contributions, spending and lobbying, maintained by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Many online resources for more specific topics can be found at the American Press Institute’s http://www.journaliststoolbox.com, the Poynter Institute’s www.poynter.org, and Cyberjournalist’s www. cyberjournalist.net.

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 77

• Most final proofreading is done on pages. In print media, the page is the ultimate product. Good magazine, newspaper and desktop editors want to see it before it reaches the press: how the parts fit together, how the typography looks, how lines of type are hyphenated and justified. Many errors elude a whole team of editors on the computer screen, only to be caught minutes before press time by a lone copy editor with an old-fashioned red pencil—the newsroom’s last line of defense. The key copy editing symbols appear on the front inside flap of this book so that you can find them easily. Think of them as media shorthand, a symbolic language understood by everyone in the publishing business. You may not use them often, but they will be extraordinarily useful when you do.

Your Computer Terminal We live and work both in the old world of hard type—this book, newspapers and magazines—and the new world of digital communication represented by everything from simple e-mail to the multimedia presentations of the World Wide Web. While many of the news industry’s products still take the form of familiar, oldfashioned print documents, those documents are now produced almost entirely by digital means. The computer has become the editor’s home away from home. Here are some of the computer resources you are likely to use as an editor. • Online wire services and feeds. The Associated Press, The New York Times, Reuters, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, the major broadcast networks and dozens of other news services provide stories, video, audio, still photos and graphics to subscriber newsrooms. In print journalism these are known collectively as the wire; broadcasters call them feeds from audio and video news services. Editors select and edit these materials based on their news judgment, their audience and space and time limitations. Handling the wire or news feeds requires editors to view and organize a great deal of news matter and to make judgments about unfamiliar stories. Since it demands specialized skills, wire editing is treated in more depth in Chapter 8. But all editors can use the news wires and feeds to add material to local stories and keep them timely. • Database services. Commercial databases are vast electronic libraries that allow journalists and others to access reliable information through keyword searches. One of the best known is LexisNexis, a database of legal and news articles from more than 31,000 sources. LexisNexis is available only to paid subscribers, however, and since access time is expensive, newsrooms that use it often limit access to librarians, database specialists and others trained in efficient search techniques. A few college journalism programs make the complete LexisNexis database available to students. Many others subscribe to LexisNexis Academic, which offers a smaller but still substantial database of 5,600 sources and employs simple search methods similar to those used with online search engines.

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HOW TO EVALUATE ONLINE MATERIAL The World Wide Web is not the cesspool of rumor, halftruth and propaganda its detractors claim, but neither is it an online version of the local library’s reference room. Since anyone can post material on the Web, the ratio of value to garbage is much lower than at a good library. But the value is there for editors (and reporters) who know how to find it. Editors who use the Web to check facts or add information to stories must be able to quickly judge the worth of Web sites and the data they contain. Here are some ways to do it: •

What’s the suffix? You can tell a great deal about a site’s potential just by looking at its address, also called its URL or Uniform Resource Locator. URLs ending in .gov are federal government sites. URLs ending in .us are usually state government sites. Those ending in .mil are U.S. military sites. And those ending in .edu are reserved for colleges and universities. While the information supplied by governments and educational institutions is hardly infallible, editors can regard it online with the same balance of trust and skepticism they would bring to printed documents from the same sources. (Keep in mind that many educational institutions give server space to students and student groups, so .edu sites need to be further inspected; they may be student work or even pranks.)

The URL .org is reserved for nonprofit organizations. That suggests a certain level of credibility can be assumed, but remember that nonprofit does not mean nonpartisan. Most .org sites will, however, supply extensive information about the organization behind the site. The familiar URL .com, along with .net and the less frequently used .info and .biz, designate commercial and privately operated sites. Some are hugely valuable to journalists, others are worthless as information sources. Evaluate them with the same care you would use to evaluate any private source. •

Who’s there? A reputable site will tell you who is behind the curtain, usually through an “about us” link displayed prominently at the top or bottom of the home page. It will also give you e-mail contact information. Many will link to personal home pages of key players. Such information helps you evaluate the expertise and likely point of view of those who operate the site. The absence of such information is a near-certain sign that the site is not trustworthy.

•

Who says? Credible Web sites, like all credible publications, explain where their information comes from. Academic sites may use formal end notes; other sites are likely to use some form of informal

• The World Wide Web. It’s probably safe to say that every newsroom in the United States now has Internet access. Editors need to know how to use it. A working knowledge of the Internet and its most widely used component, the Web, is as crucial to 21st-century journalists as typing skills were to their predigital counterparts. The Web is itself a vast collection of databases, many of them free. Thus it gives smaller news organizations and independent journalists instant access to stores of information previously available only to big institutions with deep pockets. And, of course, most newsrooms now use the Web not only as a source of information but as a means of delivering the news on their own sites. Chapter 16 considers online news in depth, but it’s important that you develop basic Web skills from the very start of your training as an editor. Boxes accompanying this chapter provide guides to useful Web sites for fact-checking and other information, as well as suggestions for evaluating the reliability of what you find online.

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 79

in-text credit or link. What matters is that you will be able to trace the information to its original source. •

•

•

What’s the slant? Second- and third-hand information proliferates on the Web, as do various mixes of fact and opinion, bogus statistics and unreliable online “polls.” Weblogs, for example, are great for finding out what people think but often suspect for establishing the accuracy of information. Business sites, entertainment sites and many private sites are more likely to be promotional tools than to offer balanced views. Think about the site’s purpose. Where are you? If you begin at a generalinformation site and your search takes you through links to other Web pages, note whether the new pages are part of the original site. If not, you will need to ascertain the credibility of the new site just as you did the previous one. A mere link between sites never means that they are equally credible. (Some, but not all, Web pages clearly distinguish between off-site and on-site links.) Can you back up? Searches often turn up pages deep within an extensive Web site. The page you hit may have the information you want, but nothing that will help you judge the reliability or ownership of

the site itself. Move toward the front of the site by eliminating the details, from right to left, of the extended address from one slash to the next until you find what you need. Or go straight to the home page by eliminating everything but the root URL that ends in .com, .edu, etc. •

When was the last update? A discontinued site may be pulled from the Web, or it may be left there moldering—and misleading—for the ages. When you are verifying facts that are in any way timesensitive, make certain the site is current. Most good sites include a “This site last updated on ...” statement. If there is no such statement but the site seems otherwise reliable, find other evidence that it is current. For instance, check an on-site bulletin board or forum to see if there are ongoing discussions.

•

What does your gut say? Editing is above all critical thinking. A sloppy, ungrammatical or poorly researched news story makes you question its reliability; a problem-plagued Web site should do the same. The reverse, however, is not always true. Don’t automatically equate polish or high-tech gadgetry with accuracy. Many dubious organizations are smart enough to dress up biased, manipulative or plain false viewpoints in slick Web presentations.

• Listservs and Usenet. Although many people equate the Internet and the Web, the Web is in fact only the tip of the online iceberg. Listservs are a form of communal e-mail in which people interested in a common topic send messages to a specific online address and in turn receive all other messages sent to that address. Usenet is a linked collection of online bulletin boards that are organized into specific topics of interest, or “news groups.” The difference is in the software; listservs use so-called “push” technology that brings news to you, while Usenet groups “pull” you to the discussion at a shared site. To a degree, listservs and Usenet have been supplanted by Weblogs, which evolved more recently on the Web itself. But the more closed environment of listservs and Usenet —participants must subscribe—gives them a continuing appeal to professionals and serious commentators who wish to avoid casual intruders and keep the dialogue focused. That very exclusivity makes listservs

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and Usenet a valuable place to find expert opinions and insights. Many of the journalism Web sites listed in this chapter provide guidance on how to subscribe to specific listservs. A Web site, http://tile.net, also will help you find lists and news groups on specific topics.

The Demands of the Digital Newsroom The computer at the editor’s desk is an extraordinary tool, an information hub that dwarfs all that has come before it and gives even the tiniest newsroom access to resources that were unimaginable just a generation ago. But the computer does not solve all problems. In fact, it creates a few new ones. Some editors complain that the sheer proliferation of computer applications and resources in their newsrooms has turned them into clerical workers who are so busy downloading, uploading, searching, coding, transferring—and, of course, rebooting—that they have little time to actually edit. The secret to avoiding such digital overload is familiarizing yourself with your computer tools so that they become an extension of the editing process, not an obstacle to it. Editors need a working knowledge of their word-processing software. In addition, they must know how to manage files so that news texts can be shared, stored, retrieved and transmitted quickly and securely. Every journalist has faced the nightmare of a story “eaten” by the system on deadline; editors need to learn about their system’s quirks and safeguards. Most computerized newsrooms give newcomers an orientation course in learning the system. It may be short and informal for reporters who need to know only basic word-processing and filing skills; it tends to be more elaborate for editors, who need deeper and more extensive computer knowledge. Schools and larger journalism programs generally offer similar computer-orientation courses. In some ways, new technology makes it easier for editors to make errors and miss the errors made by others. Digital texts, video and audio can move rapidly through newsroom channels with little person-by-person review. Some online news services are built for speed and lack the traditional checks and balances on which newspapers and television newsrooms rely. In any medium, dangers multiply when stories move too quickly from the writer to the public and receive only minimal editing. In 1998, for example, an online publication mistakenly displayed an obituary for entertainer Bob Hope. Hope was in his 90s and known to be in poor health. The obit had been prepared in advance—a common practice for prominent figures who are aging or seriously ill. In such cases, editors typically take measures to make certain the obituary is not prematurely published. It is kept in a special archive file and carries a warning note at the top. This time, however, the obituary was uploaded to a live Web file rather than to an archive. No apology or retraction can make up for such an error or for the embarrassment and pain it causes. While new media technologies tend to raise the risk of errors and distribute them more widely, they fortunately make the correction process simpler as well. Errors in print are irretrievable once a flawed edition has been printed, distributed

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 81

and archived; broadcast errors are similarly locked into history. But if an online site misspells a name, a few quick keystrokes can correct the mistake as soon as someone notices it. When online news is edited regularly, stories can be corrected and updated before the entire audience is exposed to errors or outdated information. Online editors do get a second chance. That represents a great leap forward in the media’s ability to present the news accurately and fairly, as long as online news services bring high standards to newsgathering. The unique promise of online news lies in its capacity to improve on the print and broadcast technologies that came before. The risk is that having a second chance, and a third, and a fourth, can create an editing environment in which errors, oversights and even slanted reporting are allowed to slide by because they can be retrieved and fixed later. The news audience sees mistakes—even online, and even when they are eventually corrected. We work in an era when information can be instantly accessed, transferred and distributed, but it is also an era when the media’s credibility and reputation for accuracy are at a low ebb. Copy editors must face that contradiction, and they can do so only with a balance of technological and traditional skills.

Books and Other Reference Materials The resource information available to editors online is so extensive that it is easy to lose sight of the humble book and the clumsy map. But they are still remarkable pieces of technology in their own right. They are completely mobile, they never crash, and you don’t have to wait for them to download. They are also interactive in their own way. Every veteran editor has a favorite stylebook with notes and brackets scrawled in the margins. Working editors need several reliable resources nearby: • The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. Some larger newsrooms replace or augment this standard reference with their own style guides, and broadcast editors and producers look to the AP’s companion Broadcast News Handbook. But the AP Stylebook is as close as the news industry comes to a gold standard in matters of language, usage and taste. It’s a rare day when a print editor does not open it at least once. (Chapter 2 provided an overview of stylebooks; the grammar and writing guidelines in Chapters 4 and 5 are based in part on the AP Stylebook.) • A good dictionary. Most newsrooms prefer Webster’s New World College Dictionary because it is the reference on which the AP Stylebook is based and to which AP defers on issues not covered in the stylebook. Any reliable dictionary will do in a pinch. Don’t, however, count on smaller paperback dictionaries. To save space, they tend to cut corners on exactly the issues where editors need guidance—unfamiliar and foreign words, hyphenation and secondary meanings. • A guide to writing and word usage. Many working editors have a particular favorite—William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s time-honored “The Elements of

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Style,” or more recent volumes such as William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well” or Rene J. Cappon’s “The Word.” Some prefer a dictionary-style reference on grammar and usage, such as Lauren Kessler and Duncan McDonald’s “When Words Collide: A Media Writer’s Guide to Grammar and Style” or Brian S. Brooks, James L. Pinson and Jean Gaddy Wilson’s “Working with Words: A Concise Handbook for Media Writers.” • A good thesaurus. Judicious use of a thesaurus can expand your vocabulary and give writing added precision and drama. Sloppy use of a thesaurus can turn prose into a stew of mixed metaphors and bizarre synonyms. Be sure to get a thesaurus that groups words according to categories of meaning, which is the system devised by thesaurus creator Peter Mark Roget in the 19th century. The arrangement will seem unfamiliar at first, but it is vastly superior to the more popular dictionary-style thesaurus, which trades a lot of depth for a little convenience. • An up-to-date local map. If you’re editing local news or campus news, you’ll need a clear one that shows numbered blocks, key landmarks, a reliable distance scale and one-way streets. One of the most common errors in journalism is reporting an accident or other event at the “intersection” of two streets that never cross. • A reverse city directory. They list addresses by street and number so that you can look up an address and find out who lives or operates a business there. A reverse or criss-cross directory is primarily of use to reporters, but it’s also a great fact-checking tool for editors. • A good national/world atlas. An atlas with reliable information about terrain as well as cities and roads is crucial in covering events taking place on unfamiliar ground. • Who’s Who or a similar comprehensive biographical dictionary. These references provide short biographical profiles of notable figures. They are useful for checking dates and accomplishments. • A current information almanac. They’re great for that moment on deadline when you absolutely must know the population of Zimbabwe or the vice president who served under President James K. Polk. On the copy desk, those moments turn up more often than you might think. • Congressional Directory. It provides reliable biographical information on members of Congress, their top aides, committees and more. • A good encyclopedia. The Britannica remains the benchmark for its breadth, depth and authority. Many encyclopedias are now available online as well as in book form. • The newsroom library. Once called the morgue—where stories went to be clipped and filed away when they were dead—the average newsroom library may now be a combination of computer files from recent years and dusty

Chapter 3 Focus on Skills and Tools: The Editor in the Newsroom 83

DON’T FORGET THE PHONE BOOK—AND THE PHONE The local telephone book is more than a source of phone numbers. It’s also a way for editors to check the spelling of a name or business or the exact title of a government agency. And the best way to check a local date, title or other fact—even a phone number—is sometimes by picking up the phone and investing 20 seconds in a polite call. Some editors think working the phones is a job for reporters. But a fact-checking call is often the quickest

and most efficient way to establish the accuracy of a story. Simply identify yourself and your news organization, apologize for the intrusion if it comes at an odd time and explain that you want to make sure the facts in the story you’re about to publish or broadcast are accurate. Most people are grateful that someone in the media wants to get it right.

shelves or filing cabinets from pre-electronic days. Whatever form it takes, the newsroom library is the news organization’s archive and institutional memory. It is crucial for researching and checking historical developments and providing continuity in ongoing stories. • A good outside library—and a good librarian. Most modern librarians are trained research specialists who know how to search for information and want to keep a high community profile as a way of fighting dwindling budgets. Many editors cultivate relationships with local librarians. In addition, many larger local and college libraries’ Web sites provide free public access to electronic databases and online resources that cannot be reached directly. Great copy editing is about doing the small things well with the tools at hand. Accuracy is by no means its only component, but without accuracy the rest of the job has no meaning. Copy editors who are serious about getting it right can take a lesson in commitment from Bill Bowen, an education reporter with the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram who made an error in a “minor” story a few years ago. As recounted by Michele McLellan in “The Newspaper Credibility Handbook,” Bowen wrote a brief item announcing a school board meeting the next night at the local Parkview Elementary School. The morning of the meeting, though, he realized it was to be held at Park Glen Elementary. He could write a correction for the next day’s paper, but that wouldn’t help the people trying to find the meeting that night. So Bowen wrote out directions from the wrong school to the right one and made copies. That night he stood at the door of Parkview Elementary, handing out the directions to Park Glen and offering his apologies to people as they arrived. Bill Bowen quite literally went the extra mile to get it right for his readers. And when the school board meeting finally began, they gave him an ovation.

84 Part One Approaching the Story

A Look Back at This Chapter

While the editor’s attitude focuses on news coverage, balance, ethics and audience, the skills of copy editing are devoted to issues that seem much smaller but are just as important: accuracy, precision, story organization, consistent grammar and style. Such details are the foundations on which reliable, compelling news is built. Copy editors read stories systematically to ensure that they do the small things well. They work through each story several times, moving from a general to a specific focus with each reading. The editorial process begins with a critical look at the story’s organization: Does the lead give the most important information first or otherwise appeal to the audience? Does what follows support the lead and unfold logically and clearly? The most common story model for print journalists is the inverted pyramid. It organizes information in order of its news value, and echoes some of the ways we tell stories in everyday life. Another reading is devoted to accuracy: Are words used precisely? Do the facts check out? Are typographical errors and misspellings eliminated? Are numbers and calculations handled properly? In order to perform these tasks, copy editors rely heavily on a number of tools and resources. These may be as mundane as the telephone book and as complex as specialized online databases. In editing, they all are enlisted in a common cause: the accuracy, clarity and reliability of the news.