Improve Editing Skills - Read your Copy Out Loud.

By I.J. Hudson

I apologize in advance and hope the whipping won’t last long.

I admit I made many mistakes during my 30+ years as a reporter, and more than a few mistakes got by my mind and the keyboard - and were caught by a producer, the executive producer, or an anchor.

Usually I spotted the major mistakes – generally by doing one simple thing – reading the copy out loud.  It’s definitely worthy saying/writing again - reading the copy out loud!

The written word is passive (not in tense) for the most part.  It just lays around on the paper, or on the screen, and waits for someone to come along and read it.  The people who write those words often just do the same – just read them, (lips silent or moving) to get to the end of those words quickly.  That passes for "editing." They have other things to do. The problem is that the mind tends to fill in omissions and correct mistakes.  We know what we meant, so when we read it to ourselves, it sounds okay.

But this approach can mean a loss in accuracy.

Case in point:  I looked at a tweet that linked to a story on a neighborhood news website.  The tweet had an accurate date for the end of a project; the larger story it linked to did not.  The story listed a completion date that was already four months in the past.   Ironically, both the tweet and the story were written by the same person.   Either the project was way overdue and the reporter didn’t ask why, or there was a basic mistake in the story.

Is this a big deal?  Or is it just a mistake that should be expected with high throughput?  Mistakes in basic facts are certainly a big deal if the reporter wants to be taken seriously by the readership and those in the journalism community.   What will they think of a reporter that uses a date (already past) for a new project?  What about the rest of the facts?  Can they be trusted?

The core of journalism is facts – the basics.  You must get them right, whether writing for the New York Times or the neighborhood blog.

I do empathize with upcoming journalists.  The big difference these days is that the number of “fresh eyes” looking at your copy/script is a lot lower than a few years ago.  I hate to use the analogy, “it takes a village...”  But help is help, especially when you’re in a hurry.  Thank goodness for the folks who caught my mistakes or spotted phrases that could be misunderstood.

IMHO, journalism is most successful when it’s a team sport.   That’s when you have a better chance of your words saying what you mean.  And if you don’t have a team to back you up --- at minimum, please read the copy out LOUD!  Does it sound right?  Does it make sense?  Did you just read a date of August 2010 for an upcoming project and we just passed New Year’s and are in 2011?   I’m thinking that shouldn’t sound right.

This is not criticism, just simple advice.  Today’s reporter must write quickly, and rewrite and rewrite and read every word out loud to be sure the correct meaning is conveyed. 

I was fortunate to have a lot of help.  Your best help may be YOU, reading out loud.

This TV Special - Only $19.95: True Value?

I was decent with numbers in high school.  That's primarily because there were a lot fewer numbers back then.

Today, I get easily confused by numbers, especially those that come with "only on TV" offers.  I patiently sit through them while waiting for the really good stuff to come on the SyFy Channel.  (The Twilight Zone Marathon is always one of my favorites. The alien "eye" on one episode looks like a lot of Facebook profiles.)

Back to the numbers.  I'm always intrigued by the quantity and diversity of new products that are sold only on TV.  The knife that cuts through a nail, then slices a tomato - never needs sharpening.  They had me sold at $19.95, but wait -- if you order now, we'll send you two knives - a 40-dollar value for just $19.95, and as a special gift, we'll throw in....yadda yadda yadda - all for only $19.95.  The special chef basket that does shrimp and so many great foods for $14.99. And it folds flat for easy storage.  Order now and you receive a second chef basket for free.  Wait, it comes with an chef knife - a $20-dollar value.  If you round up a dime that gives us a $60-dollar value for $20.

How do they do that?  How do they come up with these great products?  And how can they keep the price at $19.95 as we add more to the check out cart (so to speak)?  I've seen the announced value go over $100, and still - it's only $19.95 plus shipping and handling. 

I'm assuming the folks behind these products are making a profit. What is the true value of the product? How much does the product cost the people selling it?  I don't know.  I suppose in tremendous quantities the cost of manufacturing really, really dips.

And I really love the ads that have a countdown clock.  If you call within the next 15-minutes, we'll throw in a second steam cleaner, absolutely free.  And then the ad runs again 30-minutes later.  Hmmmmm.  Operators are standing by.

Experts-of-the-Moment

 By I.J. Hudson

Social Media experts are always facing a moving target in a few areas of their expertise.  Historians get a break by looking backward and trying to fill in blanks.  But in terms of technology, forward looking means trying to beat a ticking (analog) clock. You’re right, but something changes a week later and you’re wrong.

Take Facebook.  Do a search to figure out how to do a business page.  You’ll read about the differences between profiles and pages, then read advice from another expert who confuses the two.  You’ll find all kinds of advice by really smart people, but that great advice is undermined by comments that say Facebook’s policies have changed and the expert advice no longer applies.

I’m not trying to be critical, but I do suggest that we are moving in the direction of “change before publishing.”  Heck, it could be change before “hitting enter.”  I suggest that almost anything we write about “how to” may become outdated way quicker than we expected, and obviously that happens beyond our control.

Okay, how to sharpen a knife hasn’t changed much; neither has “speeding up your computer.”  When you go searching for solutions, the articles seem to hold up.

In the case of Facebook, I found comments that totally contradicted what the authors were saying – that Facebook policy toward “whatever” had changed in the last couple of weeks.  Let’s see, creating a business “page” is different from a personal profile, and you need to lie to Facebook about having a personal profile to protect that profile and be able to change it when the client leaves for someone else.  

It seems the way some of the major players  change the rules make experts look like, well, experts-of-the-moment.  What you wrote was useful - when you wrote it.   A week later, it was really out of date but still available online when I went looking for information. 

Perhaps that’s a great reason for twitter and links to the very latest thinking and strategies.  That why I follow people like @shashib and a few others.  If we don’t use advanced search properly we get wrong information from people who knew what they were talking about – when they wrote it.   Is coffee good or bad for you?  The answer is yes!

I sometimes wonder about conferences.  By the time the much-publicized conference rolls around, the major speakers have revised their remarks seven times and still may not be current.  How long does “current thinking” last?  People “tweeting” along may offer contradictory information they read just last night from another expert.

What do I know?   Only a little.  I’m the guy who keeps saying about Twitter, “it’s not the number of characters, but the character of the words.”  Just a few well-chosen words can lead to some great information.  Sometimes a lot of words if they aren’t really, really fresh and they leave room for a lot of guessing,  lead to frustration and disappointment.

So what do we need?  I think we need to be diligent in figuring out how to be sure we’re looking at “useful” information, whether written by an expert, or a guy like me.  And I think we need real some hand-holding articles that answer basic questions people have.  Not the questions that the gurus think beginners want answered.  I mean questions that not only take you step by step, but discuss each step.  What happens if I choose this?  What do I really have to know or have answers to BEFORE I start.  What traps await me if I fill out the form this way or that?  Many of us don't know what we don't know, and really need a patient guide.

Finally, we need the experts to revisit their suggestions to be sure what they said last month still holds true.  Social Media is about "is" -- not "was."