Friday, January 01, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Who Are You?
First, please load a picture to your name on class roster at e-Learning site at http://lss.at.ufl.edu
Please use this brief survey as a template to write a short autobiography as a comment to this post. Answer the following questions and anything else you think might be relevant. Keep in mind that your comments are public.
Who Are You?
Name: What year?
E-Mail:
Once completed, go back and flawlessly edit it.
- Where are you from?
- Why did you come to the University of Florida?
- What is your learning style?
- Major?
- Career Goals? Be specific as possible. Elaborate a bit.
- Why are you taking this course (besides the fact it is required)?
- Outside interests, hobbies, avocations, things you love to do?
- Tell me one interesting thing about you – something that makes you unique.
- Are you the first person in your family to attend a university?
- On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being top-notch, how would you rate your knowledge of grammar, punctuation and AP style?
- On the same scale, how would you rate your skills with working with Quark and PhotoShop and with online media?
- What books are you reading and have read in the last three months?
- What magazines, newspapers and news Web sites do you read regularly?
- What is your favorite Web site?
- Do you blog?
- Do you have any media/communication experience? If so, what?
- Are you pursuing a media related internship or job at this time?
- Do you have an updated resume in your files?
Monday, December 07, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Chapter 1: Introduction to Focused Editing
INTRODUCTION
Read: How to be a Journalism Student
On Close/Critical/Focused Editing
- Read introduction to "Line by Line Editing" : The line-by-line editor looks at each sentence analytically, seeing its components and inner workings, using grammatical concepts as a set of tools for detecting and eliminating flaws. If you simply recognize that a sentence sounds bad, you can't necessarily pinpoint and correct what's wrong. Like the driver who know that the car won't start but has no idea what to look for under the dutifully raised hood, you can only fiddle with this and that in hit-or-miss fashion.
- Read What is Critical Reading?
- Read On Close Editing
- XX - See e-Learning for PowerPoint on XXX
Chapter X - Reporting/Checking/Researching the Facts
- Is fact-checking a journalistic function? Jon Stewart Video
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Cops/Courts By the Book
Time Spent
Some reporters and editors have a problem with this construction and try to rewrite in various contortions, but it is pretty standard the way it is here.
Nazir was sentenced to the time he has spent in jail. OR Nazir was sentenced to time spent. See examples:
- He stood a Bench trial, was found guilty and was sentenced to time spent in jail awaiting trial, plus probation and parole ...
- Petrovic was sentenced to time spent in jail before trial, four-and-a-half-months, and payment of a $100 special assessment. The guilty verdict for the ...
- A man who played a minor role in the scheme was sentenced to time spent in custody and deported last month.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
On Line-By-Line Editing
The line-by-line editor looks at each sentence analytically, seeing its components and inner workings, using grammatical concepts as a set of tools for detecting and eliminating flaws. If you simply recognize that a sentence sounds bad, you can't necessarily pinpoint and correct what's wrong. Like the driver who knows that the car won't start but has no idea what to look for under the dutifully raised hood, you can only fiddle with this and that in hit-or-miss fashion.
From Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing (see = http://tinyurl.com/n3po8w )
From Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing (see = http://tinyurl.com/n3po8w )
Friday, August 07, 2009
On Close Editing
Close editing, as distinguished from scanning-for-typos, is an intensely intimate enterprise. (Just to head off any misunderstandings -- the folks at IHE have taken a blessedly light touch to editing my pieces there, mostly confining it to scanning-for-libel.) Really close editing requires not only seeing what's there, but seeing what isn't there and should be, or what is but is in the wrong place. It requires putting aside "how I would have said it" to be able to come up with something like "how you, at your best, might have said it."
From a blog post Title Editing and Intimacy
And a comment to post:
There are real editors in our midst and they can often be found lurking behind readable papers. They are professional editors. These are the ones who can transform muddiness and vagueness into spring water and clarity. They advocate for the reader. They suggest, improve, renovate, elucidate, spiff-up, improve (say, wait, does that need editing?) your documents. They turn snoozable material into a cup of good coffee. Professional editors may improve not only improve your writing but add perspective and light to your thinking.
There are organizations of them. There are good editors and not-so-good editors. There are content editors, and author's editors, and subject-matter editors. You can sometimes find them coaching students at universities.
Sure, some editing skills can be taught but editing requires a tremendous focus and discipline. Unless you're doing it full time, and can keep your skills sharp, you might just want to find a professional. And, when you find a good one, pay them fairly and keep them close.
From a blog post Title Editing and Intimacy
And a comment to post:
There are real editors in our midst and they can often be found lurking behind readable papers. They are professional editors. These are the ones who can transform muddiness and vagueness into spring water and clarity. They advocate for the reader. They suggest, improve, renovate, elucidate, spiff-up, improve (say, wait, does that need editing?) your documents. They turn snoozable material into a cup of good coffee. Professional editors may improve not only improve your writing but add perspective and light to your thinking.
There are organizations of them. There are good editors and not-so-good editors. There are content editors, and author's editors, and subject-matter editors. You can sometimes find them coaching students at universities.
Sure, some editing skills can be taught but editing requires a tremendous focus and discipline. Unless you're doing it full time, and can keep your skills sharp, you might just want to find a professional. And, when you find a good one, pay them fairly and keep them close.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Culling the richest report from the wires
By Kate Parry, Star Tribune Reader's Representative
Stan Feldman started his newspaper reading Tuesday morning with the New York Times, interested in a page one story about White House involvement in the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors.
The Times reported in the second paragraph that questions about political motivation arose after President Bush told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about complaints involving several prosecutors by Republican lawmakers.
In the third paragraph, the story explained that a year earlier, when Harriet Miers was the White House legal counsel, she had asked about replacing all 93 U.S. attorneys.
When he finished with the Times, Feldman started reading his Star Tribune. The retired schoolteacher from New Hope noticed the New York Times story about the federal prosecutors also appeared on the Star Tribune's front page. But he was surprised to see the second paragraph (on Bush and Gonzales) had been moved down to just after where the story jumped to an inside page.
That's when Feldman called me to ask what the Star Tribune's motive was in moving that paragraph. Doing so, he initially said, seemed to change the focus of the story.
We talked about why wire editors might make changes in wire stories. Feldman took another look and decided the change actually made the story easier to follow because it put events in chronological order.
As it turns out, though, wire editors Nan Williams and Catherine Preus moved the paragraph because the story dealt mostly with Miers, and they wanted to get a reference to her in the part of the story appearing on page one, said Nation/World editor Dave Peters. They then made a reference to Bush and Gonzales part of the jumpline on page one directing readers to that part of the story on an inside page.
Feldman's puzzling over the change raised an issue I hear about regularly from readers who wonder why wires stories in the Star Tribune sometimes read differently than they did when they originated at another newspaper or wire service. Many readers regularly use the Internet to compare Star Tribune wire stories to the originals on other newspaper and wire service websites. If there are changes, some are quick to assume impure motives -- mainly that Star Tribune editors are slanting stories to the political left or right.
"Of course we're not trying to introduce imbalance or unfairness," Peters said. "The editing we do is with an eye mainly to length and clarity."
Every night his wire editors comb the wires of the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the McClatchy News Service and several others for various versions of the same news events. Sometimes a story from one of those sources is clearly superior to the others and they choose to use it.
Often, Peters said, "we'll take information from several stories and combine it into one story that serves the reader better." When that much editing happens, the credit line on the story often reads "news services" or a credit is added at the end.
Editors trim and tighten stories to fit the space they've been assigned -- which means New York Times stories that tend to run long often get a trim. A skillful wire editor can do that quite seamlessly and retain the substance of the report despite shortening up background and details. About 12 inches of the New York Times story on the U.S. attorneys was trimmed.
The wire services didn't alert newspapers that the U.S. attorneys story was coming until evening, and the New York Times story didn't arrive until right on the first deadline, Peters said. His staff scrambled to get the story ready and called a top editor at home to get the go-ahead to remake the front page.
On Wednesday night, the wire editors faced another round of quickly combining differing wire stories when the Associated Press and the New York Times both offered stories on a hearing transcript that showed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed admitting to involvement in planning dozens of terror attacks, including Sept. 11.
Night team leader Steve Riel had his editors use the Associated Press version early and replaced it with the New York Times version when it arrived. Wire editor Sharon Nyberg noticed a reference in the Associated Press version to Mohammed admitting to involvement in the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl that was missing from the Times piece. She inserted that information in the Times story and in a Times list of Mohammed's claims, adding the Associated Press to a credit line at the end of the story.
The Times story was trimmed to fit the space, and Riel plucked a cautionary line from that material and added it to the list of terrorist acts Mohammed claimed to have directed. It read "Validity: It is not clear how many of Mohammed's expansive claims were legitimate. In 2005, the Sept. 11 commission said that he was noted for his extravagant ambitions and his view of himself as 'the superterrorist.' "
That line really put that list in perspective for me.
"Our goal is to provide the best and cleanest version of events," Peters said.
©2007 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
Russians Invade U.S.?
Did you know that Russian troops are thrusting into the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia? That's what readers will learn from a Google Maps graphic accompanying a news story about Russian incursions into Georgia — the nation-state in the Caucasus, not the Caucasian-pride-ridden state in the southern United States. Google's mixup will not help Yahoo Answers user Jessica B., who presciently asked, "i herd on the news that rusia has invaded but i dont see them no where wats going on."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
