About Editing and Writing

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

—Sam Brown, director of Action, a federal domestic volunteer agency, in 1977.

The country’s most powerful media voices—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the important magazines, the big digital sites—are in Manhattan and Washington, D.C.

In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump got 10 percent of the vote in Manhattan and 4 percent of the vote in Washington, D.C.

The Washington reaction was mostly shock—31 states voted for Trump? That TV clown is our next president? How did this happen?

Another reaction in Washington was we don’t want him here. This is our city and there’s nothing about him we like. (Along with the disdain, there was some journalistic looking in the mirror: How did we miss this? Are we out of touch with the country?)

James Salter, in his book Burning the Days, writing about author Irwin Shaw:

This is the third of a series of odes on NiemanStoryboard that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special  and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson, has been a newsman for almost 50 years.

To see previous poems:

Ode #1, City Editor, Friday night

Ode #2: Reporter on deadline

COPY EDITOR, STANDING GUARD

I am the last bastion,

The guardian

Of grammar and syntax,

Spelling and style,

Structure and clarity,

Accuracy and context.

 

Several years ago when Politico, the DC-based website that covers politics and government, started a glossy magazine, it was to be edited by Susan Glasser, who appeared on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” to promote it.

In a segment on “The Rebirth of Longform Journalism,” the show’s host, Frank Sesno, asked Glasser about her plans for the new magazine and she said she wanted it to be something “truly original.”

But, he asked, what kind of stories? Glasser said it would be “more ambitious journalism.”

This excerpt is from the book, Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Changes, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper, by Art Cullen, editor of The Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly newspaper in Iowa. The excerpt is about Cullen’s high school days in Storm Lake and his growing love for journalism. In 2017 Cullen won the Pultizer Prize for Editorial Writing for stories about how agri-business was poisoning the rivers and lake near Storm Lake.
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Every morning five of us would walk the six blocks down the gangplank to school. Ann would start out, about five minutes late, and then each of us would follow five minutes later. I came up last, about a half hour late, ready to wrestle with the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.