Handbook of Independent Journalism : Editing The Story
IT’S nine o’clock in the morning, and the editorial meeting in the newsroom begins with a discussion of the stories everyone is working on for that day. Some reporters and photographers already have assignments and are out covering today’s news. A few got their assignments last night; others were sent out early this morning after a conference call involving top news managers.
Reporters who do not have assigned stories yet “pitch” their story ideas at the meeting, seeking a manager’s approval to produce that story for tonight’s newscast or tomorrow’s newspaper. The assignment editor runs through a list of scheduled events that may or may not merit coverage. Once the decisions are made, the managers put together a “budget,” or line-up of stories that they hope will soon be available for publication or broadcast.
Others will require more reporting and won’t be completed today. Deciding what to run, what to drop, and what to hold is the job of the news managers, the editors, and producers. They will choose and change the stories of the day based on importance, interest, new developments, and the time or space available.
But the editor’s job still isn’t done. Before the newspaper goes to press or the broadcast hits the air, editors have another critical role to play. It’s their job to ensure that the stories presented to the public are well written and presented, as well as accurate, complete, and fair.
Most newsrooms have more than one editor. No single person could handle the volume of stories produced by most news organizations every day. In large newsrooms, there may be several layers of editors, who ultimately report to the person in charge of the news division, the chief newspaper editor or the broadcast news director. As you will see, the editor’s job calls for a variety of skills, a high degree of literacy, as well as the ability to handle a changing agenda and work relentlessly under pressure.
Newspaper Jobs
Atypical daily newspaper has a staff of reporters who cover a wide range of news. Most of the reporters at a local newspaper usually work for the “city” or “metro” desk, covering stories in the community the newspaper serves. A large newspaper with national circulation adds national and international or foreign desks, with reporters based in the nation’s capital and in other countries.
Some reporters work for specialized sections of the newspaper, covering sports, business, or features. Each of these desks or sections is headed by an editor, who oversees the reporters’ work and who may be assisted by one or more sub-editors. Newspaper editors assign the stories, they edit the written text or “copy,” and they supervise the design and layout of pages.
In most large newspapers, editors specialize in just one of these tasks, but at smaller newspapers, one person may handle them all. In addition, newspapers may have a photo editor who oversees a staff of photographers, as well as a graphics editor who supervises the work of artists creating maps, charts, and other informational graphics. Large newspapers also have a staff of researchers who help reporters find background on stories and who maintain a library, or “morgue,” of stories published by the newspaper.
Broadcast Jobs
Broadcast newsrooms are not organized like newspapers. Most broadcast reporters do not specialize in covering a particular type of story, but may instead be assigned to specific news broadcasts like the early morning news or the late night news. Each of these broadcasts is put together by a producer, who decides what stories will air, at what length, and in what order. In larger newsrooms, an executive producer supervises the work of the producers.
In addition to reporters, broadcast newsrooms have presenters or “anchors” who appear on the air and introduce the stories the reporters have covered that day. Radio and television anchors usually appear on more than one newscast per day.
The title of editor in a television newsroom sometimes is given to the person charged with the technical production of news stories, the one who cuts the video and sound together to make the finished product that goes on the air. In many newsrooms, the photojournalist who shot the video does the cutting, working with a script written and voiced by the reporter.
The Editor’s Role
Recent job listing for an editor at a small newspaper read, “is person should have strong writing, editing, and layout skills. … He or she should be accurate, responsible, able to work well within a team atmosphere, and possess supervisory skills.” A large television station seeking to hire a new producer asked for “expert news judgment … superior writing skills … must have management skills, must be multi-task oriented, and well organized.”
As you can see, editors need to be strong journalists and newsroom leaders. ey are involved in the news process from beginning to end. Editors need good news judgment because they serve as assignment managers, responsible for deciding what stories will be covered and by whom. ey must be good writers in order to help to shape the story as it is developing, discussing it with reporters in the field and deciding where to deploy more people to cover additional angles.
Editors are directly involved in decisions about story presentation, writing or choosing headlines, captions, photos, and illustrations. And they must lead and motivate the employees who report to them. Editors and producers work closely with reporters, discussing and reviewing their stories. Newspaper editors check copy, choose illustrations — either graphics or photos — and decide how the story will be laid out on the page as well as the headline.
Editors serve as a second set of eyes looking for any errors in a story. e emphasis here is on a second set of eyes. at’s because reporters should always check their own copy for accuracy before submitting it to an editor. A first draft is a good start, but that’s all it is. Every writer should allow some time for revising his or her own copy. Good writing, by definition, requires rewriting.
An accuracy check is the first level of copy-editing. Editors look for grammatical and usage errors, as well as for spelling mistakes. They pay particular attention to subject-verb agreement and subject-pronoun agreement. Editors make sure that all numbers in a story are correct: addresses, telephone numbers, ages, date, and time references.
They rework any calculations the reporter may have performed to make sure the math is correct. They confirm that the reporter has used proper titles for everyone who is quoted, and they review the use of attribution throughout the story.
Editors also look closely for any errors of fact or issues of fairness. orough editors read stories with a skeptical eye, with questions like these in mind:
• How does the reporter know this?
• Why should the audience believe this?
• Is the main point of the story supported?
• Are the quotes accurate, and do they capture what the person really meant?
• Are all sides represented?
• Is something missing?
• Is the story fair?
Editors also pay attention to matters of taste and language, which vary depending on the local culture. (We’ll talk more about that in Chapter 7, “Ethics and Law.”) Editors and reporters alike should read copy out loud — especially in broadcast newsrooms — listening for sentences that are too long, redundancies, awkward phrases, and double meanings. In many newsrooms, editors have the authority to change a reporter’s copy without consultation to fix these kinds of basic problems.
Editors are not simply proofreaders, however. They are journalists in every sense of the word. Most editors and producers either have reporting experience or reporting skills. So when they read a reporter’s story, they are looking for much more than basic accuracy. They want to know if a story would make sense to someone who knows nothing about the subject. ey’re mindful of the need to make stories engaging and interesting.
Coaching
Coaching is a way for editors to help reporters solve a story’s problems independently. It avoids the resentment reporters often feel when an editor fixes problems by rewriting their stories. And it helps reporters learn how to do better work, rather than repeating the same mistakes and letting the editor step in and fix them.
“A good editor coaches reporters through talking to them while they report and write,” says Joyce Bazira, a news editor at the Tanzanian newspaper Alasiri. “ Through coaching, writers can also … discuss the problems they are encountering in doing their assignments, with the editor trying to solve them.”
The skills involved in coaching are some of the same skills that distinguish a good journalist: listening attentively and asking good questions. Coaching works because reporters generally know the problems they are having with a story, even if they can’t quite decide what to do about them. e job of the coach is to ask questions and listen, and help the reporter improve the work. at’s quite different from the “fixer” role that some editors play:
COACH
Helps the writer;
Helps throughout the
process;
Develops the writer;
Builds on strengths;
Fosters independence;
Shares control.
FIXER
Fixes the story;
Fixes on deadline;
Undercuts the writer;
Exposes weaknesses;
Creates resentment;
Takes control.
Many editors resist coaching reporters because they think it takes too much time. ey believe it’s faster to make the changes themselves. When the deadline looms, coaching may be impractical. The newspaper must be printed on time, the newscast must go on the air, and mistakes cannot be allowed to go through.
But in newsrooms committed to coaching, editors don’t wait until the last minute to check a reporter’s copy. By working with reporters throughout the process, editors help reporters produce better stories that require less editing time at the end of the process.
Botswanan journalist Rodrick Mukumbira, currently with the Ngami Times, says he considers coaching a central part of his job as a news editor. “An editor should not only assign a reporter and correct mistakes in the final draft,” Mukumbira says. “He should intervene in the reporting process — when the reporter is struggling with the lead — to save time on the final article.”
A coaching editor will talk to reporters before they leave the newsroom, when they call in from the field, and as soon as they return, before they begin to write. e coaching editor asks simple questions that can help the reporter focus the story, such as:
• What happened?
• What is your story really about?
• What does the audience need to know?
• How can you make this clear?
• What do you think of your story so far?
• What needs work?
• What do you need to do next?
• How can I help you?
Editors who coach always look for something to praise and encourage in every story, and when they point out problems they focus on only a few at a time. e Poynter Institute’s Jill Geisler says that when she coaches, she sits on her hands. As a coach, she does not want to touch the reporter’s copy but rather to let the reporter talk about the story so she can listen for clarity and raise questions the writer needs to answer.
Coaching creates sharper journalism in a more humane newsroom. It makes dialogue a reward, not a punishment. And because people remember what they practice, coaching ultimately helps journalists do better work.
Headlines, Captions, and Teases
Besides editing reporters’ stories, editors are responsible for additional material that accompanies the stories. In newspapers and online newsrooms, editors write headlines for stories and captions for photos. A headline is both a summary and an advertisement. It gives the audience a quick idea of what the story is about, and tells readers why they should be interested in reading the entire piece.
A caption is more of a label, telling readers what the photograph or graphic shows. In broadcast newsrooms, producers may write headlines and also what are called teases, short descriptions of stories designed to make listeners or viewers want to stay tuned to get the full report.
Headlines, by definition, are short and catchy. A print headline summarizes the story, gets the reader’s attention, helps to organize the news on the printed page, and, through the use of different sizes of type, indicates the relative importance of each story. When writing a headline, the editor simply does not compress the lead paragraph into just a few words.
Good editors try to capture the central point of the story in the headline, so they need to understand a story fully before trying to write a headline. The editor has to read the story from beginning to end, and look at the photographs and graphics that will accompany the story. If the main point isn’t obvious, the editor should consult with the reporter rather than guess and risk printing a headline that is misleading or wrong. Besides, a confused editor is one indication that the story probably needs more work.
The language in headlines should be simple and straightforward. Use proper names and present tense. It’s generally acceptable not to use conjunctions — articles like “the” — and to drop linking verbs like “is” or “were.” A story that tells how a woman and her boyfriend were arrested for a string of bank robberies might be headlined: “Bandit, Boyfriend Held in Robberies.”
But avoid what editors call “headlinese,” verbs that appeal to headline writers just because they are short. Verbs like “probe,” “eye,” “nab,” “vie,” and “huddle” almost never are used in conversation, so they don’t belong in headlines.
A headline should match the tone of the story. Hard news stories demand a straight summary, like this headline from e Zimbabwe Independent newspaper, “Smugglers Dent Zimbabwe’s Gold Production.” The headline makes sure the reader knows exactly what the story is about. Feature headlines, on the other hand, may only hint at the story’s content, since they are written primarily to pique the reader’s curiosity. For example, Argentina’s Buenos Aires Herald ran this headline over a review of a new recording: “Sassy Madonna Goes Back in Time.”
Because headlines have to fit in a restricted amount of space, the newspaper editor creates headlines the way you would build a jigsaw puzzle. The copy editor for an American newspaper — the Newark Star-Ledger — Joel Pisetzner, says, “I put words together like assembling a kidnap note. Scramble, rescramble, mix and match.” While it can be fun, editors say it’s important to always keep the reader in mind.
Avoid trite or overused expressions and be extremely careful with puns or double meanings. Headlines that try too hard to be funny, clever, or gripping often fail. Above all, headlines must be accurate and honest, not misleading. What is in the headline must be in the story. Nothing annoys a reader more than a story that doesn’t deliver what the headline promised.
Much like a headline, a broadcast tease is designed to draw the viewer’s attention to the rest of the story. Teases are subject to many of the same rules as headlines. Producers must watch the story and talk to the reporter before writing a tease. Trite and clever don’t work in teases any more than they do in headlines. And teases should not over-promise or over-sell the content of the story that follows.
Unlike a newspaper headline, the broadcast tease is written in complete sentences. It stands alone, separated from the story by other news or advertising content. A tease usually does not summarize the story the way a headline would, since its goal is to make the viewer want to stay tuned in order to learn more. Instead, producers write teases that leave some questions unanswered, or they may create anticipation by promising to deliver a benefit to the viewer who keeps watching.
To illustrate the difference, consider the lead of this story from an American newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, reported from Amman, Jordan: “An Iraqi woman appeared on Jordanian state television Sunday and confessed to being the fourth member of an al-Qaida suicide bomber team that attacked three hotels here last week, killing 57 people.”
The newspaper headlined the story: “Iraqi Woman Calmly Confesses How She Tried to Blow Up Hotel.” But the tease for that same story on the NBC Nightly News on television was this: “Who is she? And why did she agree to be the fourth would-be hotel suicide bomber in Jordan? New details tonight.” The television tease did not mention the woman’s confession, but instead promised to answer the viewer’s questions about her role.
Photo captions also have a different purpose from headlines. Instead of summarizing content the way a headline does, a caption helps the reader appreciate what’s inside the visual frame. The photograph and caption together form a small story that the reader can understand without having to read the text of the story that accompanies it.
Captions should clearly identify the main people in a photograph. If several people are featured, it’s often helpful to let the reader know that the central character is the one “wearing a cap” or “standing on the right.” Captions should not repeat the exact wording of the headline or lift a sentence directly from the story. And caption writers don’t need to spell out what can be seen clearly in the photo. “Carlos Fernández smiles as he gets off the plane” is a less effective caption than: “A jubilant Carlos Fernández returns from 15 years in exile.”
Most captions are short, just one or two lines in small type. But on occasion, a newspaper or online site will carry multiple photographs with longer captions in a photo essay that tells a complete story. Longer captions can use quotations from the people pictured.
Graphics and Visuals
Newspaper reporters sometimes resent the use of graphics because they take up space, forcing stories to be shorter. But good graphics add to the visual appeal of the newspaper, attract readers’ attention, and make stories more understandable. ey help reporters’ stories, rather than take away from them. As newspaper designer Ron Reason puts it, graphics are “information, not decoration.”
Every graphic must have a purpose. Filling empty space or airtime is not a sufficient reason for using a graphic. A graphic should enhance the reader or viewer’s understanding of the story, which means the editor must fully understand the story before designing or choosing a graphic to go along with it. Graphic artists usually produce the visual images; the role of the editor is to conceptualize the graphic, find the information it should contain or illustrate, and ascertain its accuracy.
Graphics can convey basic facts or illustrate a process. Imagine you are reporting on air pollution in your country. A map could be used to show where the air is most unhealthy. An illustration could be used to show how air pollution affects the lungs. Both types of graphics work just as well for broadcast as they do for print.
Whatever the medium, avoid graphics that are crammed with too much information. e reader or viewer should be able to look at the graphic and take away one basic idea. ink of a graphic as a highway sign — the driver doesn’t get a chance to study it because things are going by too fast, so the information has to be clear and easily absorbed.
Let’s imagine you have a story that says the city’s annual budget is twice as large as it was 10 years ago. Reading closely, you notice that most of the growth has been in the last three years. A bar graph charting the size of the budget for each of the last 10 years would be an easy way to make that clear.
It is easier for readers and viewers to absorb information presented with shapes rather than raw numbers. For example, in a story about your city’s business development crowding out residents, you could list the number of apartments and office buildings in the area. However, it would be more effective to create a pie chart showing the relationship between the two.
Compare rates whenever possible, not raw numbers. It is misleading to show that one town has twice as many deaths from AIDS as another, when the first town has 10 times as many inhabitants. Calculate the rate of deaths per inhabitant so you can make a fair comparison. Editors who work with graphics need a grasp of statistics and a commitment to employ them transparently and accurately to enhance understanding.
Supervising
As we’ve already noted, editors are supervisors as well as journalists. As they work with reporters on daily stories, they also oversee their progress over the long term. ey look for opportunities — either in person or on paper — to provide constructive feedback that will help reporters improve their work. Many editors also are responsible for annual performance reviews of the employees they supervise, which is a more formal type of feedback.
Effective feedback is timely and specific. It is provided both in person and in writing. And most editors believe in providing some positive feedback in public but keeping all critical comments private. For most busy editors, the only way to ensure that their employees get the one-on-one feedback they deserve is to schedule regular feedback sessions. Letting employees know how they are doing on a routine basis is a good way to avoid unpleasant surprises at performance-review time.
News managers should find a way to get honest feedback from the staff on their own performance. is can be done through informal conversations or by asking employees to fill out an anonymous questionnaire. Either way, it’s important for managers to stress that they want people to be candid, and to avoid bearing grudges if the results are not entirely favorable. The point is for them to learn how they’re doing so they can improve their own performance.
Top editors and news directors set the tone for the newsroom and help to create a positive newsroom culture, establishing and reinforcing the norms and values that employees share. In a well-managed newsroom, editors avoid playing favorites. They encourage open communication and hold regular meetings to make sure everyone understands the goals of the news organization. Editors should pay close attention to staff morale, and do what they can to bolster it by celebrating successes and rewarding outstanding achievement. Recognizing good work in a public setting is one way to get more of it. (*)
Reporters who do not have assigned stories yet “pitch” their story ideas at the meeting, seeking a manager’s approval to produce that story for tonight’s newscast or tomorrow’s newspaper. The assignment editor runs through a list of scheduled events that may or may not merit coverage. Once the decisions are made, the managers put together a “budget,” or line-up of stories that they hope will soon be available for publication or broadcast.
At that point, you might think the managers could sit back and relax. But no decision in a newsroom is ever set in stone. Almost inevitably, plans change. News will happen that was not anticipated, and stories will be dropped because they didn’t turn out as expected.
Others will require more reporting and won’t be completed today. Deciding what to run, what to drop, and what to hold is the job of the news managers, the editors, and producers. They will choose and change the stories of the day based on importance, interest, new developments, and the time or space available.
But the editor’s job still isn’t done. Before the newspaper goes to press or the broadcast hits the air, editors have another critical role to play. It’s their job to ensure that the stories presented to the public are well written and presented, as well as accurate, complete, and fair.
Most newsrooms have more than one editor. No single person could handle the volume of stories produced by most news organizations every day. In large newsrooms, there may be several layers of editors, who ultimately report to the person in charge of the news division, the chief newspaper editor or the broadcast news director. As you will see, the editor’s job calls for a variety of skills, a high degree of literacy, as well as the ability to handle a changing agenda and work relentlessly under pressure.
Newspaper Jobs
Atypical daily newspaper has a staff of reporters who cover a wide range of news. Most of the reporters at a local newspaper usually work for the “city” or “metro” desk, covering stories in the community the newspaper serves. A large newspaper with national circulation adds national and international or foreign desks, with reporters based in the nation’s capital and in other countries.
Some reporters work for specialized sections of the newspaper, covering sports, business, or features. Each of these desks or sections is headed by an editor, who oversees the reporters’ work and who may be assisted by one or more sub-editors. Newspaper editors assign the stories, they edit the written text or “copy,” and they supervise the design and layout of pages.
In most large newspapers, editors specialize in just one of these tasks, but at smaller newspapers, one person may handle them all. In addition, newspapers may have a photo editor who oversees a staff of photographers, as well as a graphics editor who supervises the work of artists creating maps, charts, and other informational graphics. Large newspapers also have a staff of researchers who help reporters find background on stories and who maintain a library, or “morgue,” of stories published by the newspaper.
Broadcast Jobs
Broadcast newsrooms are not organized like newspapers. Most broadcast reporters do not specialize in covering a particular type of story, but may instead be assigned to specific news broadcasts like the early morning news or the late night news. Each of these broadcasts is put together by a producer, who decides what stories will air, at what length, and in what order. In larger newsrooms, an executive producer supervises the work of the producers.
In addition to reporters, broadcast newsrooms have presenters or “anchors” who appear on the air and introduce the stories the reporters have covered that day. Radio and television anchors usually appear on more than one newscast per day.
The title of editor in a television newsroom sometimes is given to the person charged with the technical production of news stories, the one who cuts the video and sound together to make the finished product that goes on the air. In many newsrooms, the photojournalist who shot the video does the cutting, working with a script written and voiced by the reporter.
The Editor’s Role
Recent job listing for an editor at a small newspaper read, “is person should have strong writing, editing, and layout skills. … He or she should be accurate, responsible, able to work well within a team atmosphere, and possess supervisory skills.” A large television station seeking to hire a new producer asked for “expert news judgment … superior writing skills … must have management skills, must be multi-task oriented, and well organized.”
As you can see, editors need to be strong journalists and newsroom leaders. ey are involved in the news process from beginning to end. Editors need good news judgment because they serve as assignment managers, responsible for deciding what stories will be covered and by whom. ey must be good writers in order to help to shape the story as it is developing, discussing it with reporters in the field and deciding where to deploy more people to cover additional angles.
Editors are directly involved in decisions about story presentation, writing or choosing headlines, captions, photos, and illustrations. And they must lead and motivate the employees who report to them. Editors and producers work closely with reporters, discussing and reviewing their stories. Newspaper editors check copy, choose illustrations — either graphics or photos — and decide how the story will be laid out on the page as well as the headline.
In most broadcast newsrooms, reporters do not record their scripts or assemble their stories until a producer has approved the content. Producers also decide the order of stories in the newscast and the amount of time to be allocated to each story.Copy Editing
Editors serve as a second set of eyes looking for any errors in a story. e emphasis here is on a second set of eyes. at’s because reporters should always check their own copy for accuracy before submitting it to an editor. A first draft is a good start, but that’s all it is. Every writer should allow some time for revising his or her own copy. Good writing, by definition, requires rewriting.
An accuracy check is the first level of copy-editing. Editors look for grammatical and usage errors, as well as for spelling mistakes. They pay particular attention to subject-verb agreement and subject-pronoun agreement. Editors make sure that all numbers in a story are correct: addresses, telephone numbers, ages, date, and time references.
They rework any calculations the reporter may have performed to make sure the math is correct. They confirm that the reporter has used proper titles for everyone who is quoted, and they review the use of attribution throughout the story.
Editors also look closely for any errors of fact or issues of fairness. orough editors read stories with a skeptical eye, with questions like these in mind:
• How does the reporter know this?
• Why should the audience believe this?
• Is the main point of the story supported?
• Are the quotes accurate, and do they capture what the person really meant?
• Are all sides represented?
• Is something missing?
• Is the story fair?
Editors also pay attention to matters of taste and language, which vary depending on the local culture. (We’ll talk more about that in Chapter 7, “Ethics and Law.”) Editors and reporters alike should read copy out loud — especially in broadcast newsrooms — listening for sentences that are too long, redundancies, awkward phrases, and double meanings. In many newsrooms, editors have the authority to change a reporter’s copy without consultation to fix these kinds of basic problems.
Editors are not simply proofreaders, however. They are journalists in every sense of the word. Most editors and producers either have reporting experience or reporting skills. So when they read a reporter’s story, they are looking for much more than basic accuracy. They want to know if a story would make sense to someone who knows nothing about the subject. ey’re mindful of the need to make stories engaging and interesting.
If a story falls short, the editor or producer must be able to work with the reporter to improve the final product. That’s when their leadership skills come into play, as they use a process commonly called “coaching.”
Coaching
Coaching is a way for editors to help reporters solve a story’s problems independently. It avoids the resentment reporters often feel when an editor fixes problems by rewriting their stories. And it helps reporters learn how to do better work, rather than repeating the same mistakes and letting the editor step in and fix them.
“A good editor coaches reporters through talking to them while they report and write,” says Joyce Bazira, a news editor at the Tanzanian newspaper Alasiri. “ Through coaching, writers can also … discuss the problems they are encountering in doing their assignments, with the editor trying to solve them.”
The skills involved in coaching are some of the same skills that distinguish a good journalist: listening attentively and asking good questions. Coaching works because reporters generally know the problems they are having with a story, even if they can’t quite decide what to do about them. e job of the coach is to ask questions and listen, and help the reporter improve the work. at’s quite different from the “fixer” role that some editors play:
COACH
Helps the writer;
Helps throughout the
process;
Develops the writer;
Builds on strengths;
Fosters independence;
Shares control.
FIXER
Fixes the story;
Fixes on deadline;
Undercuts the writer;
Exposes weaknesses;
Creates resentment;
Takes control.
Many editors resist coaching reporters because they think it takes too much time. ey believe it’s faster to make the changes themselves. When the deadline looms, coaching may be impractical. The newspaper must be printed on time, the newscast must go on the air, and mistakes cannot be allowed to go through.
But in newsrooms committed to coaching, editors don’t wait until the last minute to check a reporter’s copy. By working with reporters throughout the process, editors help reporters produce better stories that require less editing time at the end of the process.
Botswanan journalist Rodrick Mukumbira, currently with the Ngami Times, says he considers coaching a central part of his job as a news editor. “An editor should not only assign a reporter and correct mistakes in the final draft,” Mukumbira says. “He should intervene in the reporting process — when the reporter is struggling with the lead — to save time on the final article.”
A coaching editor will talk to reporters before they leave the newsroom, when they call in from the field, and as soon as they return, before they begin to write. e coaching editor asks simple questions that can help the reporter focus the story, such as:
• What happened?
• What is your story really about?
• What does the audience need to know?
• How can you make this clear?
• What do you think of your story so far?
• What needs work?
• What do you need to do next?
• How can I help you?
Editors who coach always look for something to praise and encourage in every story, and when they point out problems they focus on only a few at a time. e Poynter Institute’s Jill Geisler says that when she coaches, she sits on her hands. As a coach, she does not want to touch the reporter’s copy but rather to let the reporter talk about the story so she can listen for clarity and raise questions the writer needs to answer.
Coaching creates sharper journalism in a more humane newsroom. It makes dialogue a reward, not a punishment. And because people remember what they practice, coaching ultimately helps journalists do better work.
Headlines, Captions, and Teases
Besides editing reporters’ stories, editors are responsible for additional material that accompanies the stories. In newspapers and online newsrooms, editors write headlines for stories and captions for photos. A headline is both a summary and an advertisement. It gives the audience a quick idea of what the story is about, and tells readers why they should be interested in reading the entire piece.
A caption is more of a label, telling readers what the photograph or graphic shows. In broadcast newsrooms, producers may write headlines and also what are called teases, short descriptions of stories designed to make listeners or viewers want to stay tuned to get the full report.
Headlines, by definition, are short and catchy. A print headline summarizes the story, gets the reader’s attention, helps to organize the news on the printed page, and, through the use of different sizes of type, indicates the relative importance of each story. When writing a headline, the editor simply does not compress the lead paragraph into just a few words.
Good editors try to capture the central point of the story in the headline, so they need to understand a story fully before trying to write a headline. The editor has to read the story from beginning to end, and look at the photographs and graphics that will accompany the story. If the main point isn’t obvious, the editor should consult with the reporter rather than guess and risk printing a headline that is misleading or wrong. Besides, a confused editor is one indication that the story probably needs more work.
The language in headlines should be simple and straightforward. Use proper names and present tense. It’s generally acceptable not to use conjunctions — articles like “the” — and to drop linking verbs like “is” or “were.” A story that tells how a woman and her boyfriend were arrested for a string of bank robberies might be headlined: “Bandit, Boyfriend Held in Robberies.”
But avoid what editors call “headlinese,” verbs that appeal to headline writers just because they are short. Verbs like “probe,” “eye,” “nab,” “vie,” and “huddle” almost never are used in conversation, so they don’t belong in headlines.
A headline should match the tone of the story. Hard news stories demand a straight summary, like this headline from e Zimbabwe Independent newspaper, “Smugglers Dent Zimbabwe’s Gold Production.” The headline makes sure the reader knows exactly what the story is about. Feature headlines, on the other hand, may only hint at the story’s content, since they are written primarily to pique the reader’s curiosity. For example, Argentina’s Buenos Aires Herald ran this headline over a review of a new recording: “Sassy Madonna Goes Back in Time.”
Because headlines have to fit in a restricted amount of space, the newspaper editor creates headlines the way you would build a jigsaw puzzle. The copy editor for an American newspaper — the Newark Star-Ledger — Joel Pisetzner, says, “I put words together like assembling a kidnap note. Scramble, rescramble, mix and match.” While it can be fun, editors say it’s important to always keep the reader in mind.
Avoid trite or overused expressions and be extremely careful with puns or double meanings. Headlines that try too hard to be funny, clever, or gripping often fail. Above all, headlines must be accurate and honest, not misleading. What is in the headline must be in the story. Nothing annoys a reader more than a story that doesn’t deliver what the headline promised.
Much like a headline, a broadcast tease is designed to draw the viewer’s attention to the rest of the story. Teases are subject to many of the same rules as headlines. Producers must watch the story and talk to the reporter before writing a tease. Trite and clever don’t work in teases any more than they do in headlines. And teases should not over-promise or over-sell the content of the story that follows.
Unlike a newspaper headline, the broadcast tease is written in complete sentences. It stands alone, separated from the story by other news or advertising content. A tease usually does not summarize the story the way a headline would, since its goal is to make the viewer want to stay tuned in order to learn more. Instead, producers write teases that leave some questions unanswered, or they may create anticipation by promising to deliver a benefit to the viewer who keeps watching.
To illustrate the difference, consider the lead of this story from an American newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, reported from Amman, Jordan: “An Iraqi woman appeared on Jordanian state television Sunday and confessed to being the fourth member of an al-Qaida suicide bomber team that attacked three hotels here last week, killing 57 people.”
The newspaper headlined the story: “Iraqi Woman Calmly Confesses How She Tried to Blow Up Hotel.” But the tease for that same story on the NBC Nightly News on television was this: “Who is she? And why did she agree to be the fourth would-be hotel suicide bomber in Jordan? New details tonight.” The television tease did not mention the woman’s confession, but instead promised to answer the viewer’s questions about her role.
Photo captions also have a different purpose from headlines. Instead of summarizing content the way a headline does, a caption helps the reader appreciate what’s inside the visual frame. The photograph and caption together form a small story that the reader can understand without having to read the text of the story that accompanies it.
Captions should clearly identify the main people in a photograph. If several people are featured, it’s often helpful to let the reader know that the central character is the one “wearing a cap” or “standing on the right.” Captions should not repeat the exact wording of the headline or lift a sentence directly from the story. And caption writers don’t need to spell out what can be seen clearly in the photo. “Carlos Fernández smiles as he gets off the plane” is a less effective caption than: “A jubilant Carlos Fernández returns from 15 years in exile.”
Most captions are short, just one or two lines in small type. But on occasion, a newspaper or online site will carry multiple photographs with longer captions in a photo essay that tells a complete story. Longer captions can use quotations from the people pictured.
Graphics and Visuals
Newspaper reporters sometimes resent the use of graphics because they take up space, forcing stories to be shorter. But good graphics add to the visual appeal of the newspaper, attract readers’ attention, and make stories more understandable. ey help reporters’ stories, rather than take away from them. As newspaper designer Ron Reason puts it, graphics are “information, not decoration.”
Every graphic must have a purpose. Filling empty space or airtime is not a sufficient reason for using a graphic. A graphic should enhance the reader or viewer’s understanding of the story, which means the editor must fully understand the story before designing or choosing a graphic to go along with it. Graphic artists usually produce the visual images; the role of the editor is to conceptualize the graphic, find the information it should contain or illustrate, and ascertain its accuracy.
Graphics can convey basic facts or illustrate a process. Imagine you are reporting on air pollution in your country. A map could be used to show where the air is most unhealthy. An illustration could be used to show how air pollution affects the lungs. Both types of graphics work just as well for broadcast as they do for print.
Whatever the medium, avoid graphics that are crammed with too much information. e reader or viewer should be able to look at the graphic and take away one basic idea. ink of a graphic as a highway sign — the driver doesn’t get a chance to study it because things are going by too fast, so the information has to be clear and easily absorbed.
Let’s imagine you have a story that says the city’s annual budget is twice as large as it was 10 years ago. Reading closely, you notice that most of the growth has been in the last three years. A bar graph charting the size of the budget for each of the last 10 years would be an easy way to make that clear.
It is easier for readers and viewers to absorb information presented with shapes rather than raw numbers. For example, in a story about your city’s business development crowding out residents, you could list the number of apartments and office buildings in the area. However, it would be more effective to create a pie chart showing the relationship between the two.
Compare rates whenever possible, not raw numbers. It is misleading to show that one town has twice as many deaths from AIDS as another, when the first town has 10 times as many inhabitants. Calculate the rate of deaths per inhabitant so you can make a fair comparison. Editors who work with graphics need a grasp of statistics and a commitment to employ them transparently and accurately to enhance understanding.
Supervising
As we’ve already noted, editors are supervisors as well as journalists. As they work with reporters on daily stories, they also oversee their progress over the long term. ey look for opportunities — either in person or on paper — to provide constructive feedback that will help reporters improve their work. Many editors also are responsible for annual performance reviews of the employees they supervise, which is a more formal type of feedback.
Effective feedback is timely and specific. It is provided both in person and in writing. And most editors believe in providing some positive feedback in public but keeping all critical comments private. For most busy editors, the only way to ensure that their employees get the one-on-one feedback they deserve is to schedule regular feedback sessions. Letting employees know how they are doing on a routine basis is a good way to avoid unpleasant surprises at performance-review time.
News managers should find a way to get honest feedback from the staff on their own performance. is can be done through informal conversations or by asking employees to fill out an anonymous questionnaire. Either way, it’s important for managers to stress that they want people to be candid, and to avoid bearing grudges if the results are not entirely favorable. The point is for them to learn how they’re doing so they can improve their own performance.
Top editors and news directors set the tone for the newsroom and help to create a positive newsroom culture, establishing and reinforcing the norms and values that employees share. In a well-managed newsroom, editors avoid playing favorites. They encourage open communication and hold regular meetings to make sure everyone understands the goals of the news organization. Editors should pay close attention to staff morale, and do what they can to bolster it by celebrating successes and rewarding outstanding achievement. Recognizing good work in a public setting is one way to get more of it. (*)
