American Copy Editors Society

Active duty for the undead

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Sometimes I think journalists have an obsession with zombies.* (Or is it that the world at large has one right now?)

If you have a zombie thing, why not put it to good use as an editing agent. The zombie rule can help you determine if the sentence you are writing is passive.

I first heard about the zombie rule from American Copy Editors Society colleague Andy Bechtel, who said he wasn’t the originator. How does it work? If you can add “by zombies” to the end of a sentence and the sentence makes logical sense, then the sentence is passive.

“The parking ticket bill was passed (by zombies).” Get it? It’s a passive sentence. Whereas “The City Council passed the parking ticket bill (by zombies)” doesn’t make sense. So active sentence.

One of ACES grammar stalwarts, Lisa McLendon of the Bremner Editing Center at the University of Kansas, just did a fun video about active and passive voice and the zombie rule. She demonstrates it better than I could. So watch it! (Yes, I used an exclamation point.)

* In addition to Lisa’s video, another ACES colleague, Fred Vultee, also mentioned zombies in his blog this week.

A new resource for fact checking

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Political fact checking may still be a journalism niche, but it’s growing — as evidenced by the Poynter Institute’s announcement today that it would launch an international fact-checking site.

One of the most exciting parts of the announcement is that the website will contain e-learning packages on fact-checking skills.

Political fact checking and the fact-checking work copy editors do on stories are cousins of each other — both are about verifying statements and data and making sure that readers get the truth. All copy editors are served well by having a cache of fact-checking skills.

Also, beyond political fact checking, there’s a lot of everyday fact-checking work that journalists could be doing. Every time the local city government deals in budget numbers, there’s an opportunity to put fact-checking skills to use.

Poynter’s initiative should be an excellent resource for those who want to broaden their fact-checking base. Here are some other resources:

American Press Institute Fact-Checking Journalism Project (API’s project has done some great research on fact checking.)

The American Copy Editors Society (ACES did a fact-checking training track at its 2015 conference and has the Become a rumor smashing superhero initiative.)

Poynter’s archives (this search will lead you to stories on verification)

How to Fact Check, from Africa Check

The Verification Handbook.

If you’re looking for a primer on fact-checking skills for any reporter or copy editor, read Tips on Verifying Facts and Ensuring Accuracy in Steve Buttry’s blog.

(And look back in this blog. I’ve recently done presentations on both digital verification and critical editing that dip into the waters of fact checking.)

Talking about digital verification

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On April 10, I presented a session on digital verification at the Midwest Journalism Conference in Minneapolis.

MJC-Digital-Verification-1
My Digital Verification slideshow from the Midwest Journalism Conference, with some extra notes on some slides. Feel free to download and share the training with your colleagues or students.

I promised to post the slides from my session. Always live up to your promises.

Social media isn’t in its infancy anymore, but often journalists don’t think the same way about it as they would about what they hear in an interview or at an event. There’s a lot of information floating around out there on social media, and — horrors! — a lot of it just isn’t true.

When you use information from social media in a story, you need to treat that information like you would any news tip that comes to your newsroom. Would you automatically publish something that was called in to the newsroom? The answer probably is “it depends on what the tip is and who called it in (and if you’re sure that the person on the phone is who they say they are).”

Treat information from social media the same way. If you are aggregating tweets about a snow storm in your city while the storm is happening, and the tweets are coming from your city, you probably don’t need to do a lot of verification. Make sure the photos are original and not from the blizzard ins 2011.

But, again, it depends on the content of the tweet. A tweet that says cars are sliding on Main Street is a lot different from one that says a house collapsed under the weight of snow and two people are trapped inside.

If the topic is something that needs reporting, the fact that someone tweeted about it doesn’t mean you can skip the reporting.

Hanging out with my people

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One of the many people I’ve met over the years at American Copy Editors Society events said recently that attending his first national conference was like finally finding his tribe.

logo-nb1I fully understand.

I’m all set up for the word-nerd fun this week, starting this Thursday. I’ll be busy during the conference — although maybe not as busy as I’ve been the past few weeks getting ready for it. (That’s why the blog has been a bit sparse lately.)

One of my big jobs this week will be running the student newsroom and  coordinating all the other volunteers who produce some great content for the ACES website during the conference. At an ACES conference, there are more training sessions than one person could ever attend, so the website offers second-level training both for those who are at the conference and those who can’t join us in Pittsburgh.

Unfortunately, copydesk.org can’t reproduce the after-hours conversations about the value of editing, grammar, errors we’ve seen and other issues big and small — mostly washed down with a drink of choice in the hotel bar. But you can always follow the #ACES2015 hashtag on Twitter and Instagram to get the flavor of that.

So even if you can’t be with “your people” this week, join in some of the editing fun on the ACES conference blog.

(But be kind if you see typos in the program. And don’t tell me about them.)

The value of slowing down

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I was recently explaining triage editing to my students, telling them that when there’s a rush to publish, you have to concentrate on the big things first and not get bogged down in the things of lesser consequence.

So my hierarchy of triage editing is accuracy and clarity first, headlines (plus labels, decks … whatever your system calls them) second, grammar and punctuation third (when grammar and punctuation don’t affect clarity) and style last. Whether you capitalize a title has the least lasting impact.

Of course, triage editing depends on taking a quick read to make an assessment and then doing what you can in the time you have.

But sometimes, for some stories, it’s a good idea to just say “STOP!  Slow down. This story can’t be handled quickly. It’s better to get it right than be first.”

Poynter.org reported Tuesday that because of two recent incidents, Boston.com would be putting more emphasis on vetting stories and reassigning some editorial staffers to work on copy editing.

I particularly found this quote by Corey Gottlieb, Boston.com’s general manager, interesting:

“We’ve made a pretty strong point about the fact that it’s OK to slow down. That we’d much rather not be first but get something right and be really thoughtful about it than rush to publish and bypass the discretion that should be required of any good content producer like ours.” — http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/314791/in-response-to-missteps-boston-com-tweaks-its-editing-approach/

In a perfect world, we’d have all the time we needed to edit every story, and plenty of people behind us to take a look at it as well. And, unfortunately, sometimes errors would still find their way into copy.

It’s even more unfortunate that the rush to publish these days means many stories are posted without any editing. Because no matter how conscientious writers are, they are apt not to see their own errors — and worse, their own biases and misunderstandings.

No matter how much you want to beat the competition, or how few people are manning your copy desk, it’s important sometimes to take your time. Two specific instances would be when, as a copy editor, you think a story needs a fact check and when you think it focuses on sensitive issues that need more discussion. (That’s one of the things we’ll be talking about during the ACES national conference, March 26-28 in Pittsburgh, which has the theme “Getting It Right.”)

As a copy editor, you need to develop your “slow down” radar and you need to speak up about the value of slowing down to the editors above you. Don’t be timid about telling the bosses that something needs more editing time and another look.

That’s a different side of a copy editor’s “do no harm” mantra.

Make sure your bosses know that many more people will remember who got it wrong than who got it first.