Think like readers, edit like journalists
At the Washington Post, readers are calling attention to minor errors that they say are affecting the news organization’s credibility. The public editor, Andrew Alexander, makes that point in his column under the headline, “As errors grow, so does a credibility gap.” Readers rightfully complained about the wrong use of a word in a headline, [...]
Try New Things: Video
Sometimes our inclination is to rule out something new based on a simple gut feeling: “I don’t like it.” Or, “I don’t think I will like it.” Or, “I don’t see the sense in it.” This came up recently in a discussion about the phone app foursquare. Some in the discussion said they weren’t really [...]
Know what you know: Video
Listen. Communicate. You do this with others. But what about listening to yourself? There are many times, while reading and editing, when something doesn’t seem quite right. You might even “notice” it. But you don’t pay attention to this detail or fact or piece of information long enough to act on your instinct. That’s because [...]
Editors must re-energize at the end
One of my editing courses this semester is collaborating with a reporting course to produce a new community newspaper, The Stand. The Stand is a monthly newspaper that serves Syracuse’s South Side, an underrepresented community that is a close neighbor to Syracuse University. Editors already put out the inaugural edition, which they started and completed [...]
Skeptical editing, Part 2: Conclusion
In yesterday’s blog post, we mentioned how students in my advanced editing course followed the process of skeptical editing as they read a New York Times story published Feb. 7, under the headline, “Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord.” We invited you to read the story and follow the same process — ask questions about [...]
Headlines for the Web must be specific
In my editing class yesterday, the topic was “headlines and search engine optimization.” Guest Stephen Masiclat, a faculty member at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, led the discussion. Headline writing is an art for print alone. But when online search engines are taken into consideration, headline writing also becomes a science. Why? With [...]
