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Before I was officially editor-in-chief of Padua360, I often found myself editing the work of my peers. Editing is equally important to me as writing—to report the news in an unbiased and fair manner, it must go through multiple stages of revision. This year, I have focused especially on eliminating bias as much as possible. For example, students often end their stories with a generalization without realizing it. Closing a story with sentences such as, for example, "The event was enjoyed by all who attended" are very common at the high school level, and my staff and I are working to remedy this.
Editing should not be a process that happens only when a story is near completion. I aim to guide staff members throughout the creation of their stories, offering advice, running ideas by other staffers, and ultimately attempting to elevate each story to its highest potential.
For Padua360, I have worked to improve the system of editing so that minimal mistakes are made. First, an article is reviewed by a peer with an editing checklist that aims to catch basic errors. Then it is sent to me, at which point I check for errors that the peer editor may have missed and provide feedback on structure. However, I have also worked to implement high standards as students write by working with them to avoid common grammatical errors, generalizations, and biased statements during the writing process itself.
This is the editing checklist that each staff member must have a peer fill out before submitting their work to me, which I helped to revise at the beginning of the year. It helps students to identify easily fixable errors, as well as helping the student editing it to get a sense of what a good story needs.
When I edit a story, I intend to give staff members clear and concise advice for improvement. Below are examples of suggestions I have given.
Students should be precise and cite sources accurately. This is an easy fix that increases the verifiability of stories substantially.
I encourage students to end stories with a quote when appropriate, but to avoid ending with the source's name to maintain the impact of the original quote. This is one example of a larger goal of mine to help staffers use quotes in an effective manner.
Organizing quotes in such a way that maximizes the effect of the speaker's message comes with practice, which is why I consistently point out areas for improvements such as this in stories.
Avoiding generalizations is tricky, but I point them out whenever I see them—this has been one of our main points of focus in editing.
Many students start out their journalism careers making sweeping generalizations and quickly get a feel for how to avoid them. Editing this starts at a basic level, pointing out obvious errors such as students inserting their opinion into news stories, and as they improve, becomes more focused on subtleties with suggestions such as this one.
I often leave pointers at the end of stories suggesting areas for students to focus on going forward. This student has made substantial progress over the course of the year, but there are always new areas she can focus on to bring her writing to the next level. For example, she started out the year writing large paragraphs with quotes interspersed throughout. I am working with her now to break these up and helping her to get used to writing with methods such as LQTQ style.
One of the most important aspects of leadership for me is to reaffirm students of their successes, and particularly their improvements, while also consistently pointing out areas in which they could further improve. This builds up a sense of trust and authenticity in my editing.
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