"Help! My editor makes me mad!"

John Hinshaw was a great editor.
He knew the AP Stylebook inside and out. He started in sports and worked his way up.
When our paths crossed, I had been in radio for a number of years and my experience in the print media was limited to free lance writing. My editors made changes without informing me and published my work many months after I had submitted it.
So, when John called me in to his office after I turned in one of my first stories, I didn't know what to expect.
He asked me what I meant in one of my paragraphs. Then he began picking apart my story and I was forced to stand next to him while he went through my story practically character by character.
When I was first hired, our cops and courts reporter asked our executive editor, "Who's going to teach him how to write?"
I was sitting in the executive editor's office at the time and wondered how or if I should respond.
I don't remember what our executive editor told him, but thankfully I soon gained acceptance and respect from most, if not all, our staff.
Now, I was standing in the editor's office as he picked apart my work and I would occasionally glance out into the news room to see if anyone was snickering at my expense.
Apparently they had all been through the same experience at one time or another and if there was any reaction, it was one of sympathy.
When John was finished, I agreed the story was much stronger and over the next months I learned quite a bit from him.
When I became an editor, I remembered that experience and then realized when I read reporter's copy I couldn't figure out what they were trying to write, either.
Unfortunately, some of my reporters were as interested in learning from me as I had been interested in learning from John.
"Just change it," one reporter said with a wave of her hand.
She proved to be so sure she was the consummate writer that she couldn't learn anything from me. There was another reporter who told me years after we parted way that she had learned a lot while I was her editor.
Education often depends on the attitude of the teacher and student.
Over the years I have been frustrated repeatedly by stories that were half-baked or more likely the reporter knew what he/she wanted to write but somehow that didn't get through to the fingers on the keyboard.
I did learn how to be my own editor.
Here are some ideas that work. I can't take credit for these but I try to steal from the best!
--Do your first draft in your head, as much as possible. I have a standard rule--I don't listen to the radio or my iPod or do anything on the way back to the office after a meeting I have covered. I use that time to think through what happened, looking for what is most important to my readers and prioritizing the discussions and the decisions made in the meeting.
Not long ago I covered a meeting that was all discussion of many topics by representatives of at least four groups.
One topic wasn't brought up until near the end of the meeting.
The overall discussion was about the role the local convention bureau should play in future promotion of the city and county. How much of the Innkeepers Tax should be spent by the convention bureau and how much should go to other groups.
It wasn't until after the meeting that I realized how to best hook my readers on the story.
One man in attendance organizes softball games in our community and softball is huge around here.
He made the point that he has to contract for state softball tournaments a year in advance. If authority for the local diamonds shifts from one group to another and he can't satisfy his contracts for the games, a lot of money will be lost.
Bingo! That was why my readers should care about the meeting I suffered through (there was a lot of controversy.) Tourism means money. It means profit for business owners and it means tax revenue for many services government provides.
So, even though what the softball organizer had to say took just a few minutes during the long meeting, it became my lead.
--Take a break after your first draft.
Writers don't write, they revise. Get used to the idea you will not accept your first, second or even your third draft.
--Don't be quick to check grammar and AP style.
That may sound sacrilegious, but you must take time later for proofing on that level.
The Jews in the days of Bible history believed words were alive and had power. They were right! Ask the kid on the playground who runs home crying because of the taunts of his friends.
Early in the process, write for power and, yes, interest and entertainment (if appropriate.) The government story may not entertain but it has to be interesting. You have to be able to show relevance to the reader of the meeting you covered. If there was no relevance, start calling the participants and ask them why they attended the meeting. If you dig, you will find your answer and I sincerely doubt the final answer will be, "Yeah, we were pretty much irrelevant today."
This is the time to experiment with a turn of the phrase, if one word is more appropriate than another. In short, this is one of the best part times in the writing process. This is where you get to have fun!
--Now, you have the option of cleaning up your piece, checking for grammar and AP style before or after you share your story with a co-worker.
It doesn't have to be another reporter. In fact, you will do better to share that piece with someone who is not a professional reporter or writer. Share with someone who is just like your reader.
The highest compliment your co-worker can pay you is to say, "I read your story."
--Before you turn your work in to your editor, clean it up. Be your own editor.
Oh, yes, at any time during your reporting and writing, don't hesitate to get advice from your editor. He or she will appreciate it much more if you talk it out early instead of on deadline.
Finally, don't take it personally when your editor hands your story back to you all marked up or if they make you stand next to their desk while they go through your piece word by word.
You will grow, if you pay attention, and you will be ready when The Big Break comes.

The Story's the Thing!

When it comes to reporting, "the story's the thing!"
That may not sound as catchy as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "the game's afoot" but it is more important.
What separates us from everyone else?
Time and packaging.
When you get right down to it, all the information we report is available to anyone else who bothers to go looking for it.
I am reminded of a few people I have known over the years who did research and then wrote letters to the editor using their research to back up their point of view.
Granted, they were not always as fair minded (they had an ax to grind) as I would have liked but they did their homework, what we call "reporting" the story.
Packaging is where we really excel. Telling the story.
Why do most people not care about small town politics and government? It's because we are lousy at telling stories about them.
It's easy to throw a bunch of statistics and numbers at the reader. Information that we are spoon fed by the politicians and government employees.
When was the last time you were excited by a numbers story concerning government that you did?
If you were glad to get it over with, what makes you think your readers/viewers will bother at all?
You are competing with "CSI" on TV and the plethora of novels and websites your audience finds more compelling than what you offer.
Sorry, but you know it's true.
What is the answer?
Look to Humphrey Bogart. In"Deadline USA" he plays a newspaper editor.At one point in the movie he tells a reporter, "Break it down. I want to know how much this tax will cost the average family!"
That's not an exact quote but it's the general idea.
Good reporters are story tellers.
If you want to be a good writer/reporter, go to the story tellers that capture the imaginations of millions of people.
To use another analogy, this one from a TV commercial: The gal sees the guy and the announcer says, "He may be the greatest father and husband but first you have to get him to say hello!"
What you write is probably very important but first you have to get people to read you/listen to you.
So do yourself a favor - go to one of the most popular modern story tellers -- Stephen King. Read his book, "On Writing." In fact, I think I will pick it up and read it again!

The most important software in your tool kit

Quick! What is the most important piece of software on your computer, tablet and phone?
Is it your word processor? If you are a broadcast journalist, you might consider it to be your voice recording software.
I would maintain the most important software on your devices is ... Evernote!
If I had to give up Evernote or the software mentioned above, I would keep Evernote. It is just that important.
I am not an expert at using Evernote. I am barely above novice in that ranking. But I have more than 8,000 notes on Evernote and I am adding notes every day.
Here are some of the ways I use it:
1. As a word processor. I am a reporter and I don't need to format text. We use Adobe InDesign in our office for pagination and that has all the formatting I could ask for. Evernote does offer some basic formatting options, such as bold, underline and italic.
2. As a database. All of my stories, all of my reporting, all of my contact information goes into Evernote. Evernote indexes information three ways. Every word, every phrase is made searchable. You can (and should) divide your notes into notebooks. For example, I have separate notebooks for City Council, County Council, each of the three school board we cover and various and sundry other groupings. You can use tags for each note. I have not used tags extensively, but then again, I have not needed to do so. Even with 8,000 notes I can find what I need in just a few minutes or less. Evernote also has a very robust and complex search syntax, if you want to learn it. Again, I haven't needed to do so.
3. To always have my note file at hand. I access Evernote over the Internet on my office machine, I keep the local software version on my laptop and my netbook and on my smart phone.
That brings up the issue of security. Since all my notes are stored on servers at the Evernote office, what is to keep someone from hacking their system and stealing my information?
First, since time began, there has not been such a thing as "security." Crooks pick locks on buildings and bad guys have learned how to steal information stored in the cloud. But, if you have information so sensitive you want maximum security, Evernote gives you the option of making a notebook local only, meaning it is not synced to the cloud. The notebook is only available on that particular machine.
4. For document storage. I make it a practice to keep meeting agendas on Evernote. I often take photos of receipts and store them in Evernote. By the way, the words that appear in photographs are indexed and searchable, too. I even make audio recordings in Evernote. Audio used to be really bad when it was recorded using Evernote but in the last few updates, recording fidelity is much, much better.
So, how much does this cost, you ask? The answer is: I don't know how the company stays in business. The program you download to your local computer or phone is free. The program you can access on the Internet is free.
You can become a premium user for about $50 per year, and that gives you some additional features and uploads per month but you don't have to become a premium user. Many people will find the free version is more than enough for their needs.
As I said, I am strictly an Evernote novice. If you find this mildly interesting, go to http://www.evernote.com and read through the introductory material. You might be amazed!