Editing More Carefully

I watched “Shattered Glass” this weekend, and since then I can honestly say my edting has become more precise. At work at a daily midsize newspaper, I have found myself verifying more facts. I even found something in a story that was completely false the other day. The movie, about New Republic “fabulist” Stephen Glass, made me remember as an editor not to put so much trust in my reporters.

Week 11 Abstracts

Who Would Want to Be a Copy Editor?  

This article says copy editors as a profession are treated and perceived as the bottom of the food chain in the news room.  Because they are not respected in the real world, the author says, journalism professors often do not train their students for copy editing or espouse its importance. Auman says newsrooms would benefit from a restructuring that would increase the communication between reporters and copy editors, change the hours everyone works so the copy desk can begin earlier and create a panel of representatives to identify ways the copy desk’s job benefits readers. Then, she says, journalism schools would be more likely to suggest the job to their students.

 

As someone who has interned on the copy desk of a large newspaper and who has worked as a reporter, I can agree with Auman’s point that the copy editor is basically at the whim of the reporter. The editor can only do her job when the story is finished and must return to work when the reporter submits changes to the original. Also, the hours are not traditional: Copy editors began arriving around 3 p.m. and left around midnight each day. However, I don’t know if changing everyone’s hours is necessary or feasible. For example, reporters must do most of their work on workdays between normal business hours because that’s when most sources are available. Therefore, most interviews must be conducted between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Then, the writer must finish her story. I don’t see how the time table for this could be dramatically shifted. Also, because newspapers want to have the most up-to-date news from wire services, someone must be in the news room until the last page is sent to the press around midnight. It only makes sense.

 

I do agree with Auman, however, that it would benefit everyone in the newsroom to have more of a dialogue between reporters and copy editors. Maybe an organized lunch would help everyone get to know each other and break down the physical barriers between the two groups.

 Goodbye Copy Desk, Hello Trouble?  

This article from 1997 brought to my attention the fact that some newsrooms were experimenting with integrating copy editing into other newsroom areas rather than retaining a separate copy desk. Proponents for this new setup said it increased overall newsroom efficiency, built stronger relationships between reporters and copy editors and in many cases gave copyeditors higher job satisfaction and better hours.

 

The article raised several questions about potential downsides to this drastic reorganization. One was “Who will serve as mentors for copy editors?” It went on to say that historically, the slot editor served as a mentor for younger copy editors and even reporters. I think there probably won’t be a void if the editors in new positions mentor their successors. If there were no more slot editor position, then no one would need to know how to do that job anymore. Instead, new editors would learn the new positions a reorganization would create. The jobs would just be more specialized.

 

Another question was something like this: “If the institution of a copy desk disappears, will there be a lack of institutional support for the job?” I think this is a quite valid concern because with less physical solidarity between editors, it will be easier for the newsroom to place more importance on other functions, such as reporting. The article says with the experimental reorgs at some papers, the result has arguably been more mistakes in the final product

 

I think a reorganization/ restructuring/ downsizing of this kind would require a fairly large paper with distinct departments. That way, the copyeditor can develop specialized knowledge and working relationships with certain reporters. But for a midsize paper with less clear divisions between departments, I think the copy desk should remain a separate entity in order to support each department equally.

 Editing the Project or Series 

This article appealed to me because we are required to edit a project in our advanced editing class. I am also writing stories as part of a series for a midsize newspaper, so I thought it would be helpful to get the editor’s perspective.

 

I was somewhat surprised at the main point: A copy editor should be involved with the creation of a series from the first planning meeting through publication. I must say that for the series I am working on, no copy editors have been involved in planning. We have four reporters and one senior assigning editor. But the idea appeals to me if for no other reason than to have another person helping the series be the best it can be. I especially liked the suggestions for the copy editor to do some independent research on the topic, to help come up with headlines (which can guide the theme of the entire package), and to assist with finding graphics.

 

I wonder if many copy editors would be eager to participate in a series. At the midsize paper where I work, I don’t know if one would be easily assigned to a single project like this. It would require him or her to come in for meetings well before her normal hours, for one thing. It’s interesting to consider whether the benefit to the series would be worth the resources and time a copy editor would invest on top of the reporters’ existing work.

   

Week 10 Abstracts

National Council on Public Polls: Twenty Questions a Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results: While reading the introduction to this article, I remembered a story I had recently read at USAToday.com, which used unscientific polls to survey bald and hairy company CEOs. This story said unscientific polls are never to be used, but the story used them and told readers that’s what they were. When I read the USA Today story, I got bored after a while and stopped reading because I didn’t feel the results were reliable or representative of the entire nation, or even of all CEOs, for that matter. I think the introduction to this article gets it right when it says only scientific polls have a place in “serious” reports.  The questions suggested here are wonderful! I really like how thoroughly they force the reporter to examine the poll. I think the questions pose a somewhat daunting task for writers and editors because they require much more research than simply taking someone’s word as gospel. But they are necessary to ensure news organizations are doing right by readers, who can be easily misled by faulty or unreliable information. I love the first two questions: “Who did this poll?” and “Who paid for it?” Those really are the most important things to know when evaluating its validity.  The article seems really strict sometimes when it says a poll’s results should not be reported unless the reporter knows it has a verifiable safeguard against age-inappropriate respondents, for example. These little things might not occur to news people but should.  One of my favorite questions was “What have other polls on this topic said?” That is such an excellent question and one possibly overlooked on a regular basis. This can help avoid embarrassment later on and keep the critics at bay. I think the theme of the whole article is, when reporting on polls, always stay one step ahead of the critics by anticipating any questions they might raise.  Stinkyjournalism.org This Web site critiques the way journalists cover issues and uncovers specific and general inaccuracies in published coverage. Many of the topics seem like ones we could cover in our open-ended blog entries for this class. For example, one post on the site criticizes a trend in covering dog attack stories to focus on and vilify one or two breeds of dogs rather than focusing on the causes of and circumstances leading up to the attack. Its author compares such coverage to law enforcement officers’ racial profiling.  The blog posts are helpfully grouped into topic, ranging from science to gossip. They are also searchable by date and publication. My biggest complaint with the site is that most of the posts are six or more months old. The most recent was from two weeks ago, but the majority of them were from last year and earlier. (In some categories, the most recent post is from 2005.) Despite the infrequent posts, some of the investigative work on the site is quite interesting. I liked one report on the site that exposed how a hunting fraud fooled the international media into thinking an 11-year-old had killed a “monster” wild boar. The report exposes business relationships and other circumstances that should have disclosed in the original reporting of the event. Investigations like this are important for journalism in general because I often wonder who will be the watch dog over the press, who is supposed to be the watch dog over the government. Independent sites like this one are a step in the right direction.  Calame comes down on NYT for math in single women story 

I remember this from the regular editing lecture last year. The New York Times reported on the front page that 51 percent of American women were living without a spouse and compared this census data with data from 1950 and 2000. The problem with the trend-spotting story was it failed to mention that the “women” in the story included 15- to 17-year-olds, 90 percent of whom still lived with their parents, until the second half of the story, which was continued on an inside page. The story was corrected after the NYT public editor Byron Calame wrote a column criticizing the report. The editor then responded within days, saying he would institute a new policy: to consult newsroom employees specializing in statistics before putting such stories in print.

 

Calame’s article then goes on to say that editors admitted that at the Page 1 meeting for that day, the story’s methodology was never questioned. This reminds me of my media ride-along experience last week. I watched editors at a large newspaper discuss whether to run a story on teenage girls and STDs. The AP story said one in four teenage girls have at least one STD. Editors from many departments immediately asked who conducted the study and how they knew it was right because the data seemed so inflated. I like Calame’s suggestion that all newsroom employees undergo some sort of numeracy training in basics like percent change, stats, etc. to keep us all skeptical of fuzzy numbers.

 Margin of Error 

This was a good one for us all to read. It’s always helpful for people to consider margin of error when comparing poll results over time. In order to do this, one might think of the margin of error as a range in which the answers could fall—if the polled sample were extended to the whole population. In other words, using the example from the criticized story, Dole’s popularity rating ranged from 34 to 42. These ranges become important when comparing results over time because if there’s overlap between two ranges, then neither result is statistically greater than the other.

   

Week 9 Abstracts

Rutger’s video about plagiarism  

This video gave a simple lesson on what constitutes plagiarism, followed by a real-world example of how to cite sources and an interactive quiz testing my knowledge of when it’s appropriate to cite a source. I scored four out of five on the quiz because I failed to recognize that highly lofty language could not possibly be a student’s own words and must be stolen from a more credible and intelligent source.

A video on plagiarism is a good thing for a journalist to watch. We all think, “Of course I know what plagiarism is, and I would never do it,” but it never hurts to be reminded. For instance, I did not know that reusing a paper for another class is considered plagiarism. I thought that if the paper satisfied the needs of both classes, then you were doing nothing wrong by submitting it to another professor. (Don’t tell my professors I said so, though.)

When writing a news story, it’s easy to get caught up in reporting the facts without attributing them to your sources. For the same reason academics must cite their sources in journal articles, journalists must consistently cite their sources to avoid losing credibility with the reader. I think a good rule of thumb would be to scroll over each sentence in a story and ask yourself, “How do I know that?” If the answer is anything other than, “That’s common knowledge,” you need to add attribution.

 Readers: Anonymous sources affect media credibility 

 I was glad to see that most readers agree that anonymous sourcing is sometimes necessary. I think that readers should be able to trust newspapers to use anonymous sources wisely and only when the story cannot be told any other way. If you trust a paper to say, “So-and-so said X,” then you should be able to trust the same paper to say, “An anonymous source said X.” Maybe I’m just optimistic about journalists’ ethics, but I believe stories based on anonymous sources are just as rigorously fact-checked as stories based on named sources. I just trust newspapers not to BS me.

That said, I think it’s important that papers not use anonymous sources when another source is available. Many people do not share my trust in newspapers and would feel comforted by a named source. For example, my grandfather recently referred to the New York Times story that quoted anonymous sources in accusing Sen. John McCain of granting favors to a female lobbyist. My grandfather called the Times a “rag” and said it’s the worst paper in America. I could not convince him otherwise.

As the article concludes, a set of criteria for using anonymous sources is helpful to avoid reader incredulity while being able to tell sensitive stories. I especially like the tip to think about the source’s motives for not speaking on record and including those in the story if possible. Asking yourself about someone’s motives is a helpful exercise for reporters and editors in general. For example, I recently approved a story for publication about an event happening on the UF campus. Later, after giving it more thought and doing a little research, I told the reporter to cancel the story because the event was created to promote a private business. While this example does not relate to the issue of anonymous sources, I believe it highlights the importance of questioning the motives of reporters and sources.

 How good is your word? This article on whether to grant confidentiality to sources left me with this main point: Newsrooms should discuss their sourcing policies well in advance of having to make any real-world decisions. Not only should reporters and editors know their organization’s stance on confidential sources but the publication would do well by its readers (and potential sources) to openly publish these policies. I think online forums would be a good way to let readers in on the discussion. That way, the organization is maximizing transparency and letting readers feel they have a stake in content. When a story is held or a source left unnamed, readers will be comforted to know why the paper has made these decisions.  

Knight Foundation Newsroom Diversity Report- (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union

 

The Times-Union reached its peak newsroom diversity in 1997, with 18.8 percent of the newsroom staff non-white. The latest data from 2004 showed 10.4 non-white staff. In the paper’s circulation area, 29 percent of the population is non-white. These figures combine to give the paper a 2004 diversity index score of 35 out of 100. The median score for all papers in its category is 64.