News Editing process

Before a news story is assigned to a reporter or accepted from a beat or general assignment reporter, an editor must decide the story is newsworthy. Knowledge of the newspaper’s audience is the key to determining which news values to emphasize, and many newspapers today periodically conduct sophisticated surveys to help editors stay abreast of readers’ interests.

  In exercising news judgment, editors evaluate the extent to which each story contains one or more traditional news criteria, which include

Ø           Timeliness. Something that happens today has more reader impact than something that happened yesterday. Timeliness means that up-to-the-minute information is valuable.

Ø           Proximity. Something that happens nearby physically or geographically is important to readers, but so in information about others who share a common interest, such as people who participate in the same online discussion groups.

Ø           Prominence. People who are well-known or hold positions of authority, such as the president of the United States, often are newsmakers. But others in the community often have interesting stories, too.

Ø           Relevance. A story often has an impact on its audience, whether emotional or rational. The more people affected by the consequences of a story, the more significant the story will be.

Ø           Unusualness. It’s not usually big news if it snows in Colorado in January. But snow in Colorado in July could be newsworthy because it would be out of the ordinary.

Ø           Conflict. Whether personal or institutional, we all deal with conflicts in our daily lives, from minor fender-bender accidents to labor strikes to courtroom trials, and conflicts often are newsworthy. But journalists should always remember that conflicts involve more than two extreme positions. Many different views can be represented.

Ø           Human interest. Stories that touch reader’s lives and may help them improve their lives are newsworthy.

Thus, the editing process begins before a story is ever written. Despite the idea of news teams discussed earlier, it is not usual that a copy editor is involved at this stage. Rather, it is an editor, sometimes called an assigning editor, in charge of a newspaper section or category of news. Typical examples of types of assigning editors are city, state, sports, lifestyle and entertainment editors, but they vary with the organization and size of the paper. Whether the assigning editor conceives the idea for a story or accepts a reporter’s idea, he or she then helps direct the reporter’s work by suggesting angles that the story might examine, sources to interview and questions to ask. The assigning editor, often in consultation with other editors or the reporter, also determines whether the story should be accompanied by photographs or other artwork. If so, a photographer or graphic artist is assigned to begin working on the story.

  Once the story is written, the assigning editor reads it, primarily for content rather than style or tone. If substantial content changes are needed – for example, if obvious questions remain unanswered – the editor generally sends the story back to the reporter for additional work. If the editor is satisfied with the overall content of the story, he or she decides where it will be placed in the newspaper, how long it will be, and what size and style of headline will accompany it. Sometimes a story is sent to the copy desk with an HTK (“headline to come”) notation, meaning that the headline form has not yet been determined. Decisions about story placement and headline specifications are made by the person who lays out the page – the assigning editor, the copy desk chief, a copy editor or perhaps a layout editor or graphics specialist.

  The story is then sent to the copy desk chief, who may edit it loosely before passing it along to a copy editor sitting on the rim. In assigning copy, the copy desk chief often considers the special knowledge or ability of each rim editor.

  Like reporters, some copy editors are experts in certain fields, and this expertise can be useful in editing particular stories. Other copy editors are especially talented at handling stories based on statistics, writing bright or clever headlines for feature stories, or editing stories of exceptionally difficult topics or length.

  In modern newsrooms, all of this shuffling of stories is done electronically from computer terminal to computer terminal. But as recently as the mid-1970s. The staff at many newspapers still edited paper copy with pencils, reorganized paragraphs using scissors and glue, and physically moved copy from person to person.

  A rim editor edits the story carefully, perhaps cutting it to fit a specified length for the page layout. Copy editors, even experienced ones, should read each story at least three times. During the first reading, the copy editor analyzes the thoroughness of the content and the appropriateness and effectiveness of the lead and organization of the story. The copy editor should make few, if any, changes during this first reading.

  Next the copy editor rereads the story to make changes where needed. For example, a buried or uninteresting lead may be rewritten, the overall organization of the story may be rearranged, facts are verified; and style, grammar, punctuation and spelling errors are corrected. In addition, the copy editor addresses questions of ethics, taste and sensitivity, as well as legal problems with the story.

  Finally, the copy editor reads the story a third time to be sure all errors have been corrected and everything possible has been done to produce a clear, concise, accurate and well-organized story. During the copy editing process, the editor may need to talk to the reporter about unclear passages or to ask for details. Often the copy editor uses standard reference books or telephones sources to verify information or fill in gaps in the story.

  When the copy editor is satisfied with the story, he or she writes the headline according to the specifications assigned by the editor. Computer codes are inserted so the body and headline type will be set (or output, as it is expressed in computer jargon) in the desired style, size, width and leading (space between the lines of body type). If an informational graphic or photograph is to accompany the story, the copy editor edits it and writes a caption for it

Then the copy editor sends the story back to the chief copy editor for approval. If the copy chief finds fault with the editing or the headline, the story may be bounced back to the copy editor to make still more changes. If the copy and the headline meet with the copy chief’s approval, the computer command is given to send the story to the composing room.

  Before the advent of pagination, the story was printed on a long strip of photosensitive paper that emerged from a mainframe computer in the composing room. Following a sample layout prepared by an editor, composing room personnel trimmed excess paper and pasted the type onto a page. Most newspapers today use offset printing. In this process, after all elements for the page are pasted into position, the entire page is photographed, and printing plate, made of plastic or metal, is made from the resulting negative. This plate is then placed on the printing press.

The copy editor’s main function is to read the story carefully, eliminate mistakes, improve the language and write the headline. As the last person to check the story before it is set in type, the copy editor must be the watchdog for the newspaper and something of a guardian of the reporter, although reporters often do not see it that way. Often reporters accuse copy editors of butchering stories and destroying creativity, while copy editors believe reporters need to be reminded that they do not have license to kill the English language. Despite their differences, reporters and copy editors have one thing in common: the readers of the newspaper.

Copy editing is one of the most important and painstaking jobs on a newspaper because of the number of possible errors in a news story are great. Many of the most common ones that need to be corrected area result of carelessness on the part of the reporter. Other errors are far most complicated. That is why a copy editor must have a commitment to accuracy, a knowledge of and respect for the English language; the ability to grasp not only what a story says, but also what it fails to sat; and enough sense to know the differences between good, tight, creative editing and butchering.

Source: Internet