Editing.
Editing is a group effort, and it starts when our journalists turn in their first copies. As editor-in-chief, I’m quite nit-picky when it comes to grammar, spelling and syntax, but I never, never want to alter a writer’s voice — that’s what makes each and every story special. Let me take you through an expedited editing process — from first copy to final page.
To begin — style rules
At The ReMarker, we follow the standard, up-to-date Associated Press Style with a few clarifications and exceptions (as seen right). This sheet is posted throughout our publications suite as well as online. Also, AP Stylebooks fill our suite for easy reference.
Journalists writing for our paper are required to take an introductory, full-year journalism course. As a freshman in J-1, I recall spending weeks studying style rules with our adviser at the time, Ray Westbrook. If you’ve made it to the staff-writer-level, it’s fair to say you’re more than up to speed on the basics of journalistic copy.
First step — copy editing
We’ve had all writers this year print out two copies of their stories, with a header detailing the piece and the section it’s for.
In past years, everything — main stories, secondaries, briefs, etc. — was turned in on the same day. I found that process to be quite chaotic, so I opted to have two story deadlines: one for briefs and secondaries and one for larger pieces.
After stories are turned in, my assignments editor and I will evenly distribute them into piles for section editors to take home, mark up and ultimately hand back to writers so they can make revisions. My managing editors and I will also distribute stories amongst ourselves and scour through them.
Thus, in the first step of our editing process, at least two pairs of eyes have combed every word of writing, making next steps smoother.
Six steps — page editing
1.) Journalists designing a page are responsible for reading EVERY word on it before turning it in to a managing editor or me.
2) My managing editors and I will mainly focus on catching crucial design mistakes. After spending a large portion of the summer crafting and finalizing InDesign ‘snippets,’ we’re quite familiar with the paper’s various visual elements.
3) Then, we’ll shoot over a PDF of the page to our current adviser, Jenny Dial Creech, who’ll read every word on the page and point out areas she’s concerned about.
4) The Saturday after our traditional production week, the whole staff will come up to school from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and every page in the paper will be edited by hand three more times. Edits will then be made to the online file.
5) The day before I ship, I’ll print out every page one last time and lay them around our Harkness table. My managing editors and I will find and make any last-minute changes and ensure there’s visual consistency throughout the whole paper.
6) Finally, I’ll PDF the pages and send them to our printer.