J561 News Editing Syllabus

Summer 2009, 1-3 p.m.
John Russial

309A Allen Hall; 346-3750

This page can be found at http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/~russial/j461/sylsum09.html

Some editing refrences can be found at http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/~russial/j461/

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Books

Strategic Copy Editing is the basic text for the course, and I expect that you will have read the appropriate chapters for the week. The text reflects my approach to editing instruction, which I have developed over three decades of working as a copy editor and teaching editing. A copy or two will be on reserve in Student Services on the ground floor of the school. I have other editing textbooks that you are welcome to borrow to look at. Different editing texts agree on basic principles, but they sometimes take different approaches and offer different examples.

We'll be using AP style in this course, so you should keep a copy of the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual handy. It wastes time when you have to ask someone else if you can borrow it to look something up. Also, a current dictionary can be useful; believe it or not, it's sometimes faster than looking up a word online, though online dictionaries have become much more user-friendly over the last few years.

We will be spending quite a bit of time in the last week on page design. The lab has Quark Xpress and InDesign. We'll probably use Quark to design most pages, but if we have time, we'll use InDesign too. Many college papers now use InDesign, but most small to mid-size newspapers in the Northwest and elsewhere and many magazines use Quark, and UO students who have taken copy editing/design jobs have found their Quark skills useful.

As in other news courses, it's important to keep up with the news. This means you should be reading at least the Emerald and The Register-Guard. Try to read a major metropolitan paper, such as The Oregonian or the New York Times, as well. Both have Web sites; the Times' site is quite extensive.

Course overview and objectives

The catalog description is: "Copy editing and headline writing; emphasis on grammar and style. Problems in evaluation, display, make-up and processing of written and pictorial news matter under time pressure."

The course covers copy editing, headlines and design, pretty much in that order. In lectures, we'll discuss concepts, issues and rules and look at examples. In labs, you'll be editing copy, writing headlines, captions and other display elements and designing pages. We will spend the last third of the class doing page design.

Time pressure will be a big part of the course, as it is just about all publications. It's probably worse at newspapers, but it's also a fact of life at magazines. Editing is a balancing act. Editors must know how to manage their time -- to work quickly yet thoroughly. This is a worthwhile skill for any media professional to develop, and we will be working on deadline during the lab sessions so you can develop the skills of working well and quickly.

Attendance is required. Your grade is based largely on lab work, and the labs will draw heavily on what we discuss in the lecture portion of class. Readings from the texts also will help you improve your grade. I will allow makeup work in the case of unavoidable circumstances, such as illness, but I need to be told about this before the class is scheduled to meet, either in person, by phone message or E-mail. If you don't let me know before class, you might not be allowed to make up the work. I will accept other requests for makeup labs if you have a good reason, for example, a religious holiday or a job interview that cannot be rescheduled, but I need to be informed in advance.

Grading will be based on criteria that newspapers and other publications use. In copy editing, that means work will be graded down for errors of spelling, punctuation, style, usage, etc. (See the grading guidelines.) Certain assignments will contain errors of fact, which you will be expected to catch using reference works available in the lab. Clarity, conciseness, legal issues and organization are additional considerations. The criteria for headlines and layout also reflect publishability. See the Grading Guidelines for more detail.

Grades will be based on the following formula:

* One ongoing outside assignment will be to find (and fix) errors in newspapers such as the Emerald and Register-Guard. Other papers, such as The Oregonian or any other professional newspaper or magazine in print or online can be used as well. I will explain this assignment in class.

** I'm looking for contributions to lecture discussions and evidence of improvement over the course of the term.

I've spent half a career as an editor, most of it as a copy chief. I like to edit, and I hope I can share some of the enthusiasm I have for editing. In any event, this course is worthwhile even if you've wanted to be a reporter since you were 6. If there were such a thing as a newspaper oracle, it might say: Edit thyself. The online era has made editing skills even more important for all journalists.

The university is serious about this, and so am I. In the lab portion of this course, as in a newsroom, colleagues often discuss their work. You are, however, expected to do your own work and be graded on your own work. For example, when we write headlines, you need to work on your own headline, not glance at the headline of the person next to you and copy it. Important passages in the Student Conduct Code are in the Schedule of Classes.