Editing The Beacon

Physicians have a saying that is also good guidance for editing the Beacon: "Above all else, do no harm."

When it comes to editing, what we don't want to do is turn an author's story into a generic "Beacon story." The Beacon prides itself in being written by the community, for the community. We reflect that pride by letting each author's individual voice shine through.

That said, there are a multitude of sins that we owe it to our readers to catch and eliminate:

• Spelling errors - A spellchecker isn't the whole answer. There are many typos it won't catch, and many names it can't help with. And spelling people's names correctly is vitally important!
• Grammatical errors - This category doesn't include issues of style or usage. It's only about definite errors of sentence structure, verb tense, etc.
• Consistency errors - See Proofreading Guidelines. It's extremely helpful if you catch these errors in editing rather than waiting for the proofreaders to catch them. Time is very short by the time we start proofreading.
• Factual errors - Hopefully it goes without saying that everything in the Beacon must be factually correct. Our readers are counting on us.
• Logical errors - This category includes contradictions, missing information, information presented in the wrong order, and so on -- anything that keeps the reader from clearly understanding the article sentence by sentence, the first time they read it.
• Clarity errors - This category includes anything that causes the reader's mind to stumble, even for an instant, and anything could possibly be misinterpreted or misunderstood.
• "Social" errors - We have to be very respectful of people's privacy and feelings! If you have any doubts at all about the appropriateness of anything in an article, please flag it so we can work through any issues with the author and the people involved.

Those are the changes we need to make as editors. But perhaps the hardest part of the job is to resist the temptation to "improve" an article. Keep in mind that, except in the case of the errors described above, you don't want to substitute your words for the author's words, no matter how much better yours may be.

As long as an author's words are clear and correct, we should leave them alone. It's hard to do, but it's very important to the long-term success of the Beacon.

Voice

One thing some authors find a bit tricky is "voice." If you're writing for the New York Times, voice is easy -- you're only allowed to use the New York Times' "objective journalist" voice.

A community newspaper like the Beacon can (and should) have more flexibility in the voice department. The Beacon is where our community writes about itself, so using an objective journalist voice is often a bit inappropriate. If Mom is writing about her kid's soccer league, it's fine if she sounds like she's your neighbor writing about her kid's soccer league. There's no reason for our writers to try to sound like something they aren't!

In editing, we need to be sure the voice is clear, consistent throughout the story, and appropriate to the story. Other than that, we can pretty much go with whatever voice the author is most comfortable using (though given the choice, we should encourage authors to adopt a relaxed, friendly, informal voice, not a "New York Times" voice).

The issue of voice is tangled up with the byline, too (see below). The less objectively journalistic the voice is, the more important the byline becomes.

And by the way, it's OK (though a little weird) for a person to have a byline and still write about themselves in the third person in the story, particularly if they're only mentioned in passing. Some people feel uncomfortable doing it the other way.

Paragraph Breaks

One very important readability issue is the length of paragraphs. In general, the articles that people turn in have paragraphs that are too long for a publication like the Beacon, where the type is set in relatively narrow columns.

To avoid long, unbroken blocks of text, we usually need to add paragraph breaks to the article. These breaks need to fall at logical points in the story, of course. A good rule of thumb is to try to keep each paragraph to just two or three sentences -- more if the sentences are very short, fewer (maybe even just one!) if the sentences are very long.

Bylines and Photos

In addition to editing the story itself, there's also a short checklist of other elements that need to be complete and correct:

• Byline - Certainly we need to know who wrote every story. And in most cases, that name (or names) should appear at the top of the story as a byline. In addition to the name, it's helpful for our readers to understand the author's connection to the story or special expertise that they brought to the story. This is usually accomplished by naming the organization they are with and giving their title (if the title seems relevant). If they have no special connection to the story and just wrote it to help out the Beacon, then that second line should say "For the Beacon" or "Beacon staff," whichever is appropriate.
• Photo caption - If there's a photo, we need a short caption that helps the reader understand what they're looking at. Where, when, and why are also nice to know, but most important is "who" - be sure that people are clearly identified in the caption, left to right and front to back.
• Photo credit - Who took the photo? Are we sure they're OK with it appearing in the Beacon? If it's a photo that has been published elsewhere, then we probably can't use it for fear of breaking copyright laws.

Special Edits

Police Blotter

There are a few special edits we need to make to the police report.

• BE VERY CAREFUL with this one! Under certain circumstances, it's illegal to mention a minor's name. (Minors are 17 or less.) But the circumstances vary by the type of offense.
  • Tobacco - Only offenders 12 or older can be named.
  • Motor Vehicle - Only offenders 16 or older can be named.
  • Criminal - Only offenders 18 or older can be named.

Obituaries

There are a few special edits we need to make to obituaries, especially those we take from the Concord Monitor.

• There's usually some "junk" before the obituary itself begins. You can delete all the junk. We want to start with "JOHN SMITH, 99, of Andover..."
• As you can see in the preceding example, we want the entire name to be in all capital letters. (Most word processors make this easy. In Word, just select the entire name, then click Format / Change Case / Uppercase / OK. If you do it that way, there's no chance of introducing a typo.)
• Information about the memorial service, burial, etc. is usually out of date by the time the Beacon goes to press. If that's the case, you can either delete it as being of little interest, or tweak it to be in the past tense if you think it's interesting. If you tweak it, you can certainly eliminate the specific times and probably even the specific dates - the event and where it took place is probably enough.
• If the obituary came from the Concord Monitor, add this as the last line:
  Copyright (c) 2005 Concord Monitor

Final Edits

Just so you know, the first edit of an article isn't the last. As the story gets typeset and placed on a page, it may have to be edited for length. Some length problems can be solved by tinkering with the layout or the typesetting, but sometimes we do have to carefully cut the least-important bits of the article to make it fit.

And once the pages have all been laid out, everything gets read one more time. This proofreading step should primarily look at layout and typesetting issues, as the first edit (also called "copy edit") should have caught all the other problems we've described above.