Modern News Editing

Book excerpt: The last decade has seen significant shifts in the roles of editors in the newsroom. Pagination has moved page composition from the backshop into the newsroom, placing additional responsibilities on copy and design editors. Newsrooms have become more collaborative, with emphasis on cooperation between various departments, and between copy editors and assigning editors. The biggest change is the growth of the Internet as a medium for news delivery. Most newspapers have accompanying Web sites, where breaking news can be posted for audiences long before the next print edition goes to press. In a sense, it’s a return to the days when newspapers published multiple editions throughout the day—only now, it’s done online. In Modern News Editing, authors Ludwig and Gilmore have creatively reworked Gilmore’s classic textbook to fully integrate editing for online publication and editing for print. Whether the medium is a print newspaper or an online news site, the function of editors remains the same: to guide a news story from its inception to its publication. The fundamentals are still necessary. Is it news? How should it be approached? How should it be presented? Does the grammar pass muster? Is style consistently followed? Do headlines and photo captions capture reader interests? What are the needs and desires of the audience? Have the responsibilities of the news media to promote a free and self-governing society been met? The Modern News Editing CD-ROM is packed with exercises to practice the concepts taught. Microsoft Word files feature editable sentences and stories containing problems with spelling, grammar, style, and incorrect facts. Also included are photographs in JPEG format for import into photo editing and/or page layout programs, to practice cropping and sizing, and for use in page design. Sample pages and page templates in Quark Xpress, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe PageMaker are presented for use in page design exercises. Modern News Editing is the textbook of choice to train future editors, whether they work for a print newsroom or an online publication.