EDITING 101

Comparing style Example 1: Example 2:

Who is your audience? Is your front page appealing? Do you want a serious tone or more informal?

Headlines are easy, Aren’t they? Basic rules I've been taught for writing headlines: 1. Always use active tense. 2. Use clever punctuation. 3. Don't get clever with punctuation. 4. Use the most vivid image in the story. 5. Don't steal the reporter's thunder. 6. Use the hed to draw the reader into the story. 8. Write the hed so that the reader doesn't need to read the story.

Does anyone know the story behind this headline?

& Reporting

Rob hearkened back to the days when he was a carefree student with no responsibilities. Edit this!

Rob hearkened back to the days when he was a carefree student. Is this what you came up with as your answer?

CONTEXT: Does the story have enough background to make it understandable to a reader who is coming to the story for the first time?

Words Commonly Confused Cement/concrete -- The powder in a bag is cement. Concrete is the substance made from cement, water, sand and gravel If you're not writing about a powder, don't use cement. Exhaustive/exhausting -- Exhaustive means thorough and complete -- in the sense that a topic is exhausted, used up. Exhausting means profoundly tiring.

Glossary of Newspaper Terms

COPY EDITING What in the world is copy editing?

*Visit the link above to watch a video on Copy Editing

TIPS Discuss the headline Never assume anything Always take a fresh look Always do the Math Always use all of the tools available to you

Publishing your newspaper Take a look at some local examples of online newspapers: ws.com

WHAT WILL YOU CALL YOUR NEWSPAPER? “THE DENVER TIMES”? Or “STUDENT POST”?

*I need one volunteer to read their article aloud, any volunteers?

Cheers to you for reading your article! Comments, Questions on anything we talked about?

WHAT WAS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU LEARNED IN THIS LESSON?