Sub-Editing - Open School of Journalism

JT070
Journalistic Working Techniques
Journalism
Sub-Editing
Allan Lee
Open School
of Journalism
Open School
of Journalism
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Journalistic Working Techniques
Sub-Editing
Allan Lee
Contents
1 Editors and the newsroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1 The newsroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2 Editor roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3 Copy editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.4 The editor within . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.5 Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.6 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2
How editors select the news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1 Defining news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2 Galtung and Ruge’s news values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 Modern news values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 Choosing news for a target audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.5 Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.6 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3
Editing a news story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.1 Accuracy and structural integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2 Impartiality and balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.3 Editing for clarity, fluency, and brevity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.4 Editing direct and indirect quotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.5 Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.6 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4
Grammar, punctuation, and house style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.1 Getting the basics right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.2 Editing grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.3 Precise punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.4 House style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.5 Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.6 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5
Editing the story lead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5.1 Why a good lead is highly prized in a newsroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5.2 Story angles and summary leads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.3 Summarizing the who, what, where, when, why and how . . . . . . . . . . . 56
5.4 Achieving brevity in a lead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.5 Delayed leads and leads that need attribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Journalistic Working Techniques
5.6 Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5.7 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6
Pictures: Illustrating the news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6.1 The importance of pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6.2 Picture editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6.3 Writing cutlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.4 Ethical photo editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6.5 Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
6.6 Critical reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Solutions for exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
About the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Open School
of Journalism
6
Journalistic Working Techniques
Chapter 1:
Editors and the newsroom
Learning outcomes
__
__
__
__
After you have worked through this chapter, you will be able to:
Describe the modern newsroom environment, including how editors direct
the gathering, selection, and editing of news stories.
Outline the key roles performed by editors, copy editors, and sub-editors in
the newsroom.
Explain the main responsibilities of copy editors.
Describe the personality traits that characterize good editors.
This opening chapter serves as an introduction to the newsroom, the spiritual home and working environment of editors, copy editors, and sub-editors. It also provides a brief introduction to the course. As you work through
this course you will develop a good understanding of the knowledge and
skill set required to work as an editor in a modern newsroom. Editors’ key
roles are outlined in summary in this chapter, along with some insights into
editors’ personalities, and how they relate to other professionals in news
organizations, including reporters and corporate management. In Chapter
2 we look in detail at the news selection process. We start by considering
the “what is news?” question, then look in detail at the criteria that editors apply to news events and issues to decide just how newsworthy they
are, and whether they should be the lead story on the website, front page,
or TV bulletin. Chapter 3 takes you through the complex process of copy
editing a story. It shows how editors check stories for: accuracy, sense, and
logical structure; fairness and balance; clarity, fluency, and brevity; and for
accurate sourcing. Chapter 4 covers in detail the process of editing stories
for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and what is known as ‘house style’. In
Chapter 5 we focus on that all-important opening paragraph to a news story,
known by journalists as the ‘lead’. We find out what editors look for in a
reporter’s story lead. In Chapter 6 we turn to picture editing, exploring how
pictures tell the news, how editors assess pictures, what changes editors
can make to pictures and the ethical questions involved.
14
Journalistic Working Techniques
Chapter 2:
How editors select the news
Learning outcomes
__
__
__
__
After you have worked through this chapter, you will be able to:
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of some standard definitions of
news.
Describe the news values developed by researchers Galtung and Ruge in
the 1960s.
Explain modern news value guidelines that can be applied to events to determine whether they are newsworthy.
Explain how editors tailor their content to their target audiences, and how
editors’ audience knowledge is informed by market research.
In Chapter 1 we discussed the various roles performed by editors. In this
chapter we explore in detail one of their biggest roles—news selection. We
will start by looking at how useful definitions of news are in helping us
distinguish between news and non-news. We will look at some early ‘news
values’ developed by academics Galtung and Ruge. We will then discuss a
range of guidelines that have been developed to measure the potential news
value of events and issues. We finish the chapter by looking at how news
is very much ‘horses for courses’—at how editors seek to understand their
audiences and what news will interest them.
If you tune into news bulletins occasionally you will know that when really
bad things happen, they will probably make the headlines. A school bus
collides with a garbage collection truck and eight kids are seriously injured.
A chunk the size of Manhattan Island falls off the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica and scientists blame climate change. Eight hundred people are left
homeless as a tornado rips through northern Dallas. We might guess that
these are all headline-grabbing events. But what exactly is it about events
or issues in our world that determine whether they make it onto front pages
of newspapers and into broadcast bulletins? What boxes do editors want
to see checked before they decide that an event or issue qualifies as news?
Shocking and life-changing stories make the news, but so do hundreds of
Sub-Editing
X
23
Exercise 4
Read a selection of news stories published on news websites and in
your local newspaper. See how many news values you can identify
in each story (impact, conflict, proximity, prominence, timeliness,
novelty, currency). Weigh up the news values in these stories from
the perspective of your family and your neighborhood. So for example will the events in the story really impact you or your neighbors? Some stories will meet three or four news value criteria. Can
you find a story meeting five or more criteria?
X
Exercise 5
Please read the extract below—part of a story about a strike starting
on the London Underground. Identify and list the news values present in this story.
A 48-hour strike by London Underground workers began this evening following a row over ticket office closures.
Members of the RMT union started the strike at 9pm, causing disruptions on all underground services and costing businesses millions.
Transport for London (TfL) is reporting severe delays on the Jubilee
Line, Hammersmith and City Line, and the Circle Line.
On the Metropolitan Line there are severe delays between Harrowon-the-Hill and Aldgate due to strike action, but the service is still
running on the rest of the line
The London overground is not affected by strike action.
Commuters are being advised to seek alternative routes, such as
black cabs, buses, cycling and walking.
London Mayor Boris Johnson has branded the strike as “mad” as
last-ditch talks to avert a walkout collapsed after descending into
bitter recriminations.
The dispute is over plans by LU to save £50 million a year by closing
ticket offices with the loss of 953 jobs.
Open School
of Journalism
24
Journalistic Working Techniques
Chapter 3:
Editing a news story
Learning outcomes
__
__
__
__
After you have worked through this chapter, you will be able to:
Explain how editors edit news texts for accuracy, sense, completeness, and
logical structure.
Explain how editors ensure that news texts are impartial and balanced.
Demonstrate how to edit news texts for clarity, fluency, and brevity.
Demonstrate how to accurately source material in news texts including
using direct and paraphrased quotes.
When experienced editors work through a news story they simultaneously
assess and edit the story against a long list of criteria that all need to be met
before publication standard is achieved. As we found out in Chapter 2, the
first of those criteria is about the article’s newsworthiness. There is no point
putting time into a story if it is not publishable because it lacks news values
such as timeliness and impact. If the article is newsworthy, the editor can
then begin to prepare it for publication.
Editors ask a lot of questions, such as: Is the article making sense and is
it easy to understand at the first read? Do the facts seem plausible and are
there any unanswered questions or holes? Is the story balanced and fair?
Are assertions made in the introduction to the article backed up with factual evidence and quotes from appropriate sources? Is the writing fluent
and is the language appropriate for the audience? Are technical or obscure
terms explained and translated into plain English? Does the article have
a clear, logical structure? Is there sufficient background to help the reader understand the significance and context of the event or issue? Has the
writer used strong direct quotes? Could parts of the story be more concise?
Are there any ethical issues associated with publishing the article? Editors
have to be satisfied with the answers to all these questions and more before
a story is ready to publish.
36
Journalistic Working Techniques
3.5 Chapter summary
In this chapter we have covered many of the detailed tasks and skills in-
__
volved in copy editing news texts. We have looked at:
__
__
How news stories need to be edited to ensure they are complete, including necessary context and background, as well as being accurate
and easy to understand at first read.
How editors consider whether stories are impartial and balanced, giving a fair run to all sides of an issue.
How the language in news needs be simple and clear, avoiding unnecessary technical terms, jargon and unfamiliar expression; how it must
also flow smoothly with variation in sentence length; and how editors
__
achieve brevity by deleting superfluous background, process detail,
quotes and verbosity, and by eliminating redundant words and phrases.
How editors ensure sourcing is clear and make calls on the mix of direct quotes, paraphrased quotes and partial quotes, and also correctly
punctuate those quotes.
3.6 Reflection
While this chapter has had a tight focus on detailed copy editing, it is important to remember that editors are also big picture people. They are the
most senior and usually the most experienced journalists in the newsroom.
One minute they are worrying about the punctuation in a tricky sentence,
the next minute they are making a call on whether to publish a story that
could seriously damage the reputation of a big business. That call will have
ethical dimensions and potentially a legal dimension. So editors are continually shifting their focus from the biggest issues to the smallest details.
X
Exercise 6
News story editing
Edit the stories in these three exercises to improve their fluency,
clarity, and brevity. Look for opportunities to change a formal expression into informal expression, a clumsy expression to a smooth
expression, and technical language into plain English. Look for opportunities to take out words and phrases, and to delete repetition.
And in the first story, about a young woman winning a video camera
in a competition, look to cut out anything you feel doesn’t add to
the story.
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Bibliography
Ang, T. (2000). Picture editing. (2nd ed.). Oxford, England: Focal Press.
BBC News. (2005). Picture power: fire-escape drama, published 30 September, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4245138.stm
Cappon, R. (1982). The Word. New York, N.Y.: Associated Press.
Conley, D. (1997). The daily miracle: An introduction to journalism. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.
Evans, H. (1972). Newsman’s English. London, England: Heinemann.
Evans, H. as cited in Pape, S. and Featherstone, S. (2005). Newspaper journalism: a practical introduction. London, England: Sage.
Fowler, G. (1961). Skyline: A reporter’s reminiscence of the 1920s. New
York, N.Y.: Viking Press.
Friend, C., Challenger, D. and McAdams, K. (2005). Contemporary editing
(2nd ed.). New York, N.Y.: McGraw Hill.
Galtung, J. and Ruge, M. (1965). The structure of foreign news. Journal of
Peace Research, 2(1), 64–90.
Harrower, T. (2008).The newspaper designer’s handbook. (6th ed.). New York,
N.Y.: McGraw Hill.
Hemingway, E. (1960). A moveable feast. New York, N.Y.: Scribner.
Keeble, R. (2005). Print journalism: a critical introduction. London,
England: Routledge.
Layton, C. (1999). State of the American newspaper: What do readers really want? American Journalism Review, March 1999. http://ajrarchive.org/
article.asp?id=3271
Marr, A. (2004). My trade: A short history of British journalism. London,
England: Pan Books.
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McFarlane, I. (1995, August 14). Write on for clarity. The Australian, p. 15.
Mencher, M. (2006). News reporting and writing, 10th edition. Boston, MA:
McGraw Hill.
Monk, L. (1989). Photographs that changed the world. Toronto, Canada:
Macfarlane Walter & Ross.
Online News Survey: Online Readers More Likely to Also Read Print. Report
by AYTM.com, published January, 2014. http://aytm.com/blog/daily-survey-results/online-news-survey/
National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Code of Ethics, retrieved
from https://nppa.org/code_of_ethics
Rascoe, B. as cited in Edwards, T., Catrevas C. N., and Edwards J. (1933).
Useful quotations: A cyclopedia of quotations. New York, N.Y.: Grosset &
Dunlap.
State of the News Media 2014: Overview. Report from the Pew Research
Center, published March, 2014. http://www.journalism.org/2014/03/26/
state-of-the-news-media-2014-overview/
Strunk, W. & White, E.B. (1959). The elements of style. New York, N.Y.:
Macmillan.
Thomson, D. Why it’s so hard to measure online readership. The Atlantic, published February 8, 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/
archive/2014/02/why-its-so-hard-to-measure-online-readership/283658/
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About the author
Allan Lee is a senior lecturer in journalism at
Auckland University of Technology in New
Zealand. He teaches news writing, business
journalism, copy editing and news design.
Allan has edited and contributed to several
books on journalism. Prior to joining the university, Allan worked as a journalist on newspapers and magazines in the UK, Australia,
and New Zealand. His main research interest
is in production journalism.
Open School
of Journalism
Journalism
JT070
Journalistic Working Techniques
Sub-Editing
Allan Lee
Open School
of Journalism