Skills That Editors Need

Once upon a time, stories were written on copy paper. Editors used pencils. They could cross out a few words, write a few new ones in the margins, move a graph by circling it and drawing an arrow inserting it higher or lower. But that was about it. Make too many marks on the copy paper and the typesetter would be unable to decipher it. A heavy reorganization of the story required the editor to put a fresh piece of paper in his typewriter and re-keyboard the whole thing. As a result, editors on deadline did only what was necessary, and not more. Computers make it way too easy to over-edit, and way too many editors do, moving graphs up and down, substituting their word choices for the writers' throughout, etc. This is a particularly disaster when done by the world's many mediocre editors. As one of my colleagues puts it, a bad carpenter can put up twice as many shoddy buildings if you give him a pneumatic hammer.
Bruce DeSilva (Associated Press)

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Bruce points out that it made overediting possible. That's true, and I'm sure there are excesses, but what computers replaced were technologies that made underediting the norm (OCR was evil, and paper and pencil weren't a lot better).
John Russial (University of Oregon)

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While I find most of what you have to say both interesting and useful, John, I'd like to take issue with one point.
You write:
"Bruce points out that it (newsroom computers) made overediting possible. That's true, and I'm sure there are excesses, but what computers replaced were technologies that made underediting the norm (OCR was evil, and paper and pencil weren't a lot better."
I think it's more complicated than that, and that in some ways, for some editors, pencil and paper was a superior technology.
By making it so easy to reorganize and rewrite copy, computers magnify both our strengths and our weaknesses. They make it easier for the best editors to handle copy, but of course that means they also make it easier for poor editors to damage copy. And, more importantly, they make it much too easy for the many editors who think their job is to rewrite.
Overediting isn't just an occasional excess, as you seem to suggest, John.. It is an epidemic that does enormous damage to stories, writers and the proper exercise of the editing function.
For editors who are going about things the wrong way -- and there are a great many of them -- pencil and paper would be better. With pencil and paper, it was very difficult to heavily reorganize or rewrite a story. So, editors tended to do only what was necessary. If a story really needed an extensive rewrite or restucturing, the editors had to kick it back to the writer.
With pencil and paper, editors edited and writers wrote -- which was the way it should be.
Let me also pick one nit. Your note seems to suggest that the standard for whether something is an improvement is whether editors "like" it. I suspect bad editors who have fallen into the rewrite habit "like" their compters just fine.
Bruce DeSilva (Associated Press)

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For the admittedly great number of, as Bruce says, "editors who are going about things the wrong way," the solution is to TRAIN them, to refrain from setting them loose on anyone's copy until the organization has reason to believe they have a sense of what editing is, how it works, what an incredible privilege it is to be paid to help writers find ways to deliver their message better. Organizations whose training consists of saying, "Now you're an editor; go edit" deserve what they get.
The fact that technology lets bad editors do their damage faster is not an argument against technology. It's an argument against bad editors, who are not only, IMHO, the single largest factor hurting newspapers but also the single largest reason why young people decline to go into journalism after doing even very successful internships. I see this process happen over and over, and as a person who loved both being a writer and being an editor, and who now tries to light those fires in college students, I find it both infuriating and sad.
Of course you can argue, as editors often do, that people coming out of college don't know nearly as much as they ought to. But they know enough to recognize places where no one feels responsibility for helping writers grow and develop. (They *don't* know enough to recognize how many editors in those places would LOVE to do the job right, if only the system supported and allowed and encouraged and trained them to.)
That's today's diatribe. The semester's grading awaits.
Jane Harrigan (University of New Hampshire)

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Let me second Jane's comments. I think many faculty, under the positive influence of Don Murray and his Poynter disciples, do a lot of coaching and the good students leave college appreciating the process and wanting to keep it going. I've had several students tell me that they sought out editors who would coach them and were frustrated when they couldn't get such support.
R. Thomas Berner (Penn State)

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I'd like to associate myself with Jane Harrigan's perceptive and good-spirited remarks. In most newsrooms I visit, there are more good reporters than good editors. This isn't the editors' fault. Editing is hard work, and few people are adequately prepared for it. We need better recruitment, development and oversight of editors. To me, technology isn't the real variable here.The real variable is people and how we find, prepare and treat them.
Carl Sessions Stepp (University of Maryland)

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One way to begin training editors properly is to list the competencies (skills, knowledge, characteristics) we expect them to exhibit on the job. Then we can systematically train on those competencies that are lacking. And organizations can use a list of competencies to screen candidates, evaluate on-the-job performance and better support an expectation of training. In search of solutions, can we list the competencies we believe good editors should have to be hired and employed as editors? Be specific. One can't train on "having fire in the belly" or the ability to "make a story sing."
Quantify the competencies required to go about things the right way If you want, start with a one-paragraph job description that is a capsule overview of the job and sets the overall tone/goals, then list specific competencies (skills, knowledge, characteristics) as one sentence descriptions.
Consider your responses as answers to these two questions:

• What skills, knowledge, and characteristics are required to do the job?
• What behaviors have the most direct impact on performance and success on the job?

I've actually be struggling with this exercise for a project I'm embroiled in much of the coming winter. Any and all input would be welcome, and we might end up with a concrete training agenda.
Michael Roberts (Cincinnati Enquirer)

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My remarks on the topic of skills editors need are directed primarily at training for assigning editors, rather than department heads or copy editors. Of course, at some newspapers, editors may play two or all three of those functions. Also, I should note that I come at this question from a variety of directions, having spent seven years as an assigning editor, two as a copy editor, three as a department head and eight as a reporter, plus more than three years at small papers where I wore multiple hats.
Here's my suggestion for the overview paragraph Michael suggested: An assigning editor must be adept in three primary areas: words, ideas and leadership. An editor who is outstanding in two of these areas but weak in the third is a weak editor. Experience and training can help an editor improve in all three areas, but basic ability and interest in all three areas are crucial. An editor must know when and how to improve copy. An editor must generate and stimulate ideas about what stories to tell, how to find them and how to tell them. An editor must know when and how to inspire, coach, correct, praise, stay out of the way. A fourth area, organization, can make an editor more effective in any or all of the three primary areas.
Specific skills and behaviors, by area:

Words

• The editor must ensure that the story's point is clear early in the story.
• The editor must ensure that the story's length is appropriate to the importance and interest of the story, in relation to other stories and the day's newshole.
• The editor must ensure that the story is accurate.
• The editor must ensure that the story is fair.
• The editor must ensure that grammar and word usage are correct and that the newspaper's style is followed.
• The editor must remove or explain jargon.
• The editor must remove cliches from stories.
• The editor must ensure that the story is organized clearly and logically.
• The editor must achieve as much of this as possible in discussions with the reporter before and during the writing process, and/or by giving the story back to the writer for revision.
• When the editor must change copy herself, she must respect and try to retain the writer's voice and style.
• The editor must be open to innovative writing techniques, but must hold those attempts to high standards.
• The editor must hold traditional writing techniques to high standards.

Ideas

• The editor must ask questions of reporters, stimulating thought about ideas to pursue for stories.
• The editor must ask questions as a reporter is gathering information for a story, both broadening the reporter's view to other angles and sources of information and helping the reporter focus his work.
• The editor must ask questions as a reporter is writing, helping the reporter focus and organize the story.
• The editor must ask questions when giving a story back to a reporter for revision, helping the reporter identify ways to strengthen the story.
• The editor must read stories (including but not only those she edits), watching for follow-up points, unanswered questions, angles to pursue in greater depth, stories that can be localized.
• The editor must understand his readers and keep them in mind.
• The editor must understand her community's history, economy, politics, culture and geography.
• The editor must have sound news judgment.

Leadership

• The editor must understand that reporters are closer to the news and generally will have the best story ideas.
• The editor must understand that reporters know the story best and generally know the best way to tell it.
• When the editor has to give an assignment or direct how to approach a story, he must respect the reporter's pride of authorship and allow some room for personal growth and satisfaction.
• The editor must celebrate the achievements of her reporting staff.
• When the editor receives praise, he must share credit with the appropriate reporters.
• When reporters receive praise, the editor must not try to get a share.
• The editor must enjoy her job enough that reporters are enthusiastic about working for her.
• The editor must identify areas of weakness for a reporter to strengthen, and discuss with the reporter ways to improve.
• The editor must identify strengths that a reporter can make even stronger, and discuss with the reporter ways to improve.
• The editor must be candid about reporters' strengths and weaknesses, and about progress or slippage.
• The editor must ask reporters about their ambitions and discuss long-term and short-term plans for achieving them.
• The editor must talk to reporters about each story they write, assessing the performance briefly and looking ahead, at follow-up angles for the story and/or at ways to improve performance in future stories.
• The editor must understand and reflect the priorities of the newsroom's top editors.
• The editor must know when to play "good cop" and when to support unpopular decisions of top management.
• The editor must not change copy because that's not the way he would have written it.
• The editor must know when to get out of the reporter's way.
• The editor must nurture the enthusiasm of youth.
• The editor must guard against the mistakes of inexperience.
• The editor must value reporters' experience.
• The editor must develop challenges for reporters facing burnout.
• The editor must recognize when a reporter needs a break.
• The editor must communicate as personally as possible: face-to-face when the reporter is in the newsroom, by telephone when the reporter is on the road or in a bureau (with face-to-face visits at the bureau as often is practical). The editor should use e-mail and memos only as a secondary form of communication. Rarely, if ever, should important matters be communicated first in writing.
  Every now and then, the editor must tell a reporter, "Make this story special."

Organization

• The editor must have a system for keeping track of daily, short-term and long-range stories reporters are working on.
• The editor must talk frequently with reporters about short-term and long-range stories.
• The editor must talk daily with each reporter assigned to her who is working that day.
• The editor must have a system for keeping higher editors appraised of progress on short-term and long-range stories. (The desk or newsroom may have such a system, but if not the editor needs to develop his own system.)
• The editor must have a system for tracking professional improvement goals and progress of reporters.
• The editor must be able to identify and explain key points clearly and quickly in discussions with reporters and higher editors.
• The editor must save examples of strengths and weaknesses to use as illustrations in discussions with reporters on professional improvement.

This list strikes me as a little light in terms of organization skills, but that may reflect its author.
Steve Buttry (Omaha World-Herald)

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This discussion on the education of editors is most helpful, especially at a time when Don Fry and I are revising "Coaching Writers" and as Poynter prepares its first leadership and management conference along the lines of National Writers' Workshops. I'm probably the last kid on the block to read the book "First Break All the Rules," by Marcus Buckingham, who explained the Gallup research on management at a recent ASNE meeting. The book and presentation reaffirmed many of my opinions on coaching and editing, but also turned my mind around on several points.
Buckingham argues persuasively that TALENT (not skills, competencies, knowledge) means everything. A great copy editor has a special talent (I passion for detailed accuracy). A great reporter has a different special talent (a desire to unearth important secrets). A great story teller has another special talent (to create vicarious experiences for readers). So does a great assigning editor (to help writers and reporters reach their full potential in service to the reader). The "secret" to success is identifying and rewarding the talent that is productive to the enterprise.
Buckingham argues that we waste time by hiring off-talent and the compensating by trying to cram into a person what is not there. (I am guilty of this a hundred times over.)
The talents of a reporter and a coach are not identical, even though the may overlap. How then do we identify assigning editing talent? I'll stop here although the temptation is to elaborate at length upon the knowledge I've gained from this important book.
Roy Peter Clark (Poynter Institute)

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In "First, Break All the Rules," Buckingham/Coffman define "talent" as "a recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied." The emphasis, they add, is on "recurring." Talent, in their use of the word, is competency.
Traditional categories of competency-based job descriptions are skills, knowledge, and characteristics. Each are large, complex categories. "Characteristics" is probably the most complex, and usually considered the hardest to develop or measure. Characteristics can include thoughts, feelings, attitudes, appitude, self-confidence, values and other personality traits.
Buckingham/Coffman argue that the best managers can read talent and manage people accordingly, playing to strengths and not expecting everything from everyone. Like Roy, I too have wasted many hours of my life trying to push that rock uphill.
And, yes, it is very-hard-to-impossible to train on "passion" or "desire."
But those characteristics are only part of an overall assessment of a job's requisite talent or competency. "Passion" for copy editors is a characteristic. Hopefully that passion can be productively applied with editing skills and knowledge. "Desire" for a reporter is a characteristic.
Hopefully that desire can be productively applied with reporting skills and knowledge.
So when we turn to assignment editors, along with passion and desire and other characteristics, we should be able to list skills and knowledge that come into play when an editor regularly helps "writers and reporters reach their full potential in service to the reader," or however we describe success.
A description or list of competencies, like the one Steve Buttry offered, is part of the foundation for the focused, predictive interview process Joe Grimm describes. You need to know what you want in a candidate -- in all three categories -- to identify and hire the right people. And then if organizations want to offer training to help people develop competencies, grow in their jobs and build careers, then training needs to focus on those competencies (skills, knowledge) that can be learned. A strong competency-based job description becomes a road map for trainers and an assessment tool for organizations to recognize and reward top performers.
I really hope others on the listserv will take a shot at quantifying some of the necessary competencies for an assigning editor. If not a whole list as complete as Steve's, then just some of the things you believe should be on such a list. The collective knowledge on this listserv is a unique resource. We all see different parts of the puzzle as journalists and trainers. Each contribution is important.
And, again, I would offer to summarize and share a collective draft at some point, if that is of interest.
Michael Roberts again

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We recently asked reporters how their editors helped or hindered them most. Then we asked editors to think back when they were reporters and remember the traits they admired most in the best editor they ever had. The responses were remarkably similar. Here is an edited version, grouped by categories, of what our reporters said they appreciated most most from their supervisors.

What reporters are asking for:

Communication

• acting as a sounding board and giving guidance, then stepping back and only stepping in when asked (yet being available and showing interest in how the story is progressing.)
• setting up a framework of responsibilities, what stories, notebooks and features to run on what days, and allowing me to decide how to fill those requirements.
• talking through stories at the beginning then not changing editors at the end.
• communicating what is wrong with a story and allowing me to try to fix it.
• being concrete and detailed both with compliments and criticisms.
• making time to discuss and help plan stories in advance
• understanding my personality quirks so to better understand how to communicate with me.

Collaboration

• letting the reporting not preconceived ideas drive the process.
• editing in a collaborative spirit.
• recognizing a writer's style and avoiding the urge to infuse their style into the story.
• reading what they've changed out loud to avoid making an edited section of the story sound different than the rest of the story.
• not predetermining in their own minds what should be in the story and then complaining when I don't find it.
• not acting as if they know more about the news event than I do when they weren't there.

Expertise

• reading a lot of stuff outside the PD. My best editors were people who had something intelligent to add to my stories that they culled from the Times or the Journal or some mass circulation magazine.
• helping me with the nitty-gritty stuff - this isn't quite the word you want * this transition needs another stab.
• making suggestions about what elements should be presented higher in the story.
• suggesting an Internet site that may help with story or saying "something like that recently happened in Painesville.
• providing top-notch copy editing (countless times editors have saved my butt by being diligent).
• passing on tips they have heard.
• helping reporters frame story ideas.
• knowing the area or the county I'm covering, making questions more on point.

Support, Trust, Challenge

• prodding me to do my best work, making me think carefully about the point of view, the theme, the tone or the point of my story. I don't like my stories to just get shipped over to the copy desk. I like weaknesses to be pointed out, changes to be suggested, new ideas offered.
• thinking through a story and challenging my thinking. That sort of exchange always produces the best stories.
• remaining flexible, allowing me to chase a larger or better story for a few days and letting some of the more menial tasks slide.
• shepherding me when I'm off by a hair or just need a little direction to keep focus. The best editors nudge me just enough so that I can find my way. By respecting the cadence of my story and helping the copy desk respect it, too.
• listening to my ideas and being enthusiastic about them if they think they are good ones.
• getting photo and/or graphics involved as early on as possible rather than expecting me to do it at the last minute.
• having enough clout or getting enough support early on so the story won't get nixed late in the game by someone who disagrees with the basic subject.
• understanding that writing well involves some risk and being supportive when it works and also by being frank when it doesn't.
• being open to new ways of telling stories and new ideas about what is news.

And here are a few of the characteristics editors remembered about their best editor:

• Acted as a sounding board
• Patient
• Intellectual peer
• Engaged in real discussion with me
• Trusted, respected me
• Not threatening
• Supported you with higher-ups
• Pointed out mistakes in a constructive way
• Helped me strengthen my voice
• Kept encouraging me, kept coming up with ideas
• Explained what needed to be done, then let me do it

Stuart Warner (The Plain Dealer)

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The list Stuart Warner offered about the skills and qualities that reporters are asking editors to have is really useful. It's also a bit daunting. It seems to be a job description for a Superman or a Superwoman. I wonder which of these competencies would rise to the top if reporters were asked to place priorities on them.

My guess is that one size won't fit all; a paper would almost need a "process" audit to figure out which of these competencies were most needed.
John Russial (University of Oregon)

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Our assessment of editor competencies is reflected in the syllabus we developed for a10-week line-editing course that we've offered several times at The Oregonian. I also take a modified version of that syllabus on the road for one- and two-day line-editing workshops. The topics include:

1. The Qualities of a Good Line Editor. (Here's what we're aiming for, in general.)
2. The Coaching Editor. (Adapting your job to a coaching model.)
3. Editing for Story. (Coaching narrative and other forms that go beyond the inverted pyramid.)
4. Analyzing the Writing Process. (Developing an editing process that parallels and assists what reporters go through at the various stages of a story.)
5. Long Coaching. (Setting long-range goals for reporters and creating a plan that will help achieve them.)
6. Fixing Copy. (Editing skills to apply when you actually put your hot little editing hands on a keyboard.)
7. Time Management. (How do you re-jigger your job to accomplish all this.)
8. Resources for Editors. (Books, computer programs and on-line sites that will help you do your job.)

Jack Hart (The Oregonian)

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We teach a segment in our leadership-training course called Hiring for Talent. It includes defining dimensions for the position, sorting the dimensions according to "necessary" and "helpful," learning how to identify talent, learning how to screen for talent, learning how to interview for talent, learning how to screen for skills and knowledge, and learning how to screen for fit and validation of skills and knowledge. I think the most important steps are defining the necessary and helpful dimensions and interviewing for talent. We also use "First, Break All the Rules" in the same leadership training course.
Baylies Brewster (The Virginian Pilot)

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Although I'm learning to abhor sports analogies -- especially after listening to the recent election coverage -- I find myself leaning toward one. It involves Tiger Woods, at a young age one of the most successful athletes in the world. Those who have followed his career know that his father had him hitting a golf ball as a tiny tot. So some combination of nature and nurture gave him his "talent" for playing golf. He surely had this by age 15, if not earlier, and -- barring injury -- it's there for life. He went on to win the Masters.
Then something happened. He asked his coach Butch Harmon to help him become a BETTER golfer. It is said that Harmon "re-made" Tiger's swing. The emphasis, by the way, was on making his strengths even stronger so that his weaknesses would rarely come into play. We all know the results.
So maybe the application for us is to hire, and PROMOTE, for talent. Provide training that makes the strong stronger. And find ways to give recognition and reward for the combination of talent, effort, and productivity. How often do newspapers "promote" a person to their level of incompetence, rather than rejiggering the rewards systems, so that a great assistant city editor doesn't have to become an AME in order to gain money and status?
Roy Peter Clark (Poynter Institute)

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Roy, you hit on the modern-day reality of most newsrooms and confusion it creates for training (heck, isn't this the trainer challenge?):
Buckingham argues that we waste time by hiring off-talent and then compensating by trying to cram into a person what is not there. That suggests two phases:

1. Before the hire: Know what you want, what the job/assignment is, what it can lead to. Also, a consistent approach to recruiting, sources and talent searches. Recruiting is a part of the newsroom, even when it's at full staff.
2. After the hire: Innovative orientation, clear career tracks, advancement opportunities, constant communication about changes in the newsroom/workplace and how they relate to each staffer, lots of feedback and training.

Here's where the theory hits the reality: how many newsrooms, especially smaller, community papers, have more "talent" vs. "off-talent"? And given Buckingham's observation, should we NOT train the "off-talent" – because it's a waste of time and money -- and just start over with 100% talent no matter what it takes. (Trade 4 non-talents for 2 talents?)
Any leadership training should have a huge segment on hiring and prospecting for talent. Quality problems usually have their roots in Buckingham's "off-talent."
Tom Silvestri (Media General)

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Buckingham argues persuasively that TALENT (not skills, competencies, and knowledge) means everything. A great copy editor has a special talent (passion for detailed accuracy). A great reporter has a different special talent (a desire to unearth important secrets). A great storyteller has another special talent (to create vicarious experiences for readers). So does a great assigning editor (to help writers and reporters reach their full potential in service to the reader). The "secret" to success is identifying and rewarding the talent that is productive to the enterprise. How then do we identify assigning editing talent?
Roy Peter Clark (Poynter Institute)

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Most of us learn to interview on the job, and never get any formal training.
A fallacy is that journalists, who do a lot of interviewing, should be good at this. It's just a different kind of interviewing: It's meant to be predictive rather than investigative. It's about what will happen rather than about what has happened.
There are so many areas of interviewing that must be mastered: consistency, probes, cross-cultural, other selection tools (tests, tryouts, simulations, resume analysis) that the concept of talent, as defined in "Break" is at the far end of the tunnel.
The challenge, of course, is to start tackling those basics while keeping the distinctions among talent, experience, knowledge and skills in mind.
We have had some bad experiences hiring people whose shortcomings we thought we could train away, and some successes in cases where we went whole hog into using a person for the talents they have, rather than chasing around after them to develop those they didn't.
I learned a long time ago -- in fact, I model -- "Nobody's perfect."
The person you think you want is never the person you get, though you often find wonderful talents and skills you never knew you needed.
An issue that goes as deep for me as talent is the issue of character: integrity, respectfulness, tenacity ...
Joe Grimm (Detroit Free Press)

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I agree wholeheartedly on the importance of hiring talented people, as editors or any other position. Training is wasted, or at best inefficient, when you are training marginal talent. However, training and experience are crucial to maximizing talent. My inherent talent hasn't changed since I entered this business back in the early 1970s. But I'm a much more valuable employee because of what I've learned through training and experience. It's true that some reporters or copy editors who are talented at those positions do not have the inherent talent to be good line editors. It's equally true that some who have the talent to be good line editors learn bad habits and skills from the editors they work for and with. We need to work this equally hard from both directions: Identify the basic talents required for line editing and develop training programs to help editors realize the full potential of their talents.
Steve Buttry (Omaha World-Herald)