About Editing and Writing

The previous post, “Covering a President: ‘The Challenge Is to Be Fair,’ was about journalist James Dodson’s meetings with former President George H.W. Bush. Here’s another Dodson presidential meeting, this time with Donald Trump. The 2017 story by Bill Littlefield, of radio station WBUR, describes what it was like for Dodson, by then mostly a golf writer, to meet President Trump at a Trump golf course in North Carolina. Two excerpts from Littlefield’s good story:

“I knew Trump was very interested in golf,” Dodson says. “I knew he was buying up golf courses. His M.O. was to find a financially distressed property, buy it, keep it in bankruptcy, do a half-a-million-dollar renovation, fire the entire staff and hire a third back.”

 Final Rounds, a 1996 book written by journalist James Dodson, is the moving story of a son taking his terminally ill father on a last golf trip to Scotland.  As they are waiting to play a round at St. Andrews, the world’s oldest and most famous golf course, former president George H.W. Bush is there ready to tee off with a large crowd watching. As a Washington reporter, Dodson had covered Bush in the 1980s.

“This must be a little strange for you,” my father reflected. “To cross paths with  your old friend Mr. Bush like this.”

By Barnard Law Collier

I tour the web each morning and read world news media in many languages and political stripes. What I find is that the place where well-seasoned editors are currently most missed and missing is among the journalists born in the 80s, 90s, and 00s in nations around the globe, including India and China.

Is it possible for a “young” editor today—in NYC, Mumbai, Hong Kong, or Moscow—to find a hub of seasoned web-based editors of whom to ask questions and present problems for wise and workable solution?

By Lee Walburn

Good stories begin with good ideas.

While at the barber shop or hair stylist, listen to what people are talking about. Do it in the checkout line at the supermarket. Do it at the neighborhood saloon. Do it wherever people congregate and talk. What seems to be concerning them? What about their jokes and their stories? Has the news of the day had any impact on their lives? Are they excited about anything or anyone?

Use your own emotions as an idea factory by thinking in the abstract and writing in the specific. What makes you angry? What are you afraid of? What intrigues you?

Sukiyabashi Jiro is a Tokyo sushi restaurant that has been awarded three stars from the Michelin Guide and its sushi master, Jiro Ono, once starred in a charming documentary film, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. As an editor, I couldn’t help watching the film and thinking about what I could learn from how Jiro delivers such consistent high quality.

I figured that running a restaurant must be a little like running a magazine: You’re offering something to the public that you hope they’ll enjoy and they’ll think is worth the money, and your success depends on word of mouth and repeat business. So I watched the film a second time and took notes about how Jiro did his work:

Sy Hersh’s autobiography, Reporter: A Memoir, is full of stories about editors, with some payback and side comments about journalists who got in his way. Four short excerpts:

A writer-editor battle between writer Sy Hersh and Abe Rosenthal, executive editor of the New York Times, from Hersh’s book,  Reporter: A Memoir—it took place as the Times was editing a series of stories written by Hersh and Jeff Gerth about Hollywood lawyer and fixer Sidney Korshak: