Following the Polling

Nate Silver has two items this week that are of particular interest to editors
wanting to get polling right.

The  oil spill question.

And, reflecting his grounding in baseball stats, he's got an especially interesting, if not completely scientific, take on the liberal value of Elena Kagan and Diane Woods, rooted in age and longevity.

What Silver is especially good at is delving into the numbers and avoiding the horse-race qualities of most poll reporting.

Choosing the Right Word

Why we need editors: This isn't a melee or a parents' fight, at least as described in this incomplete story. A disruption, certainly. Argument? Something. But I can't see a fight described here.

And it's a little odd that the game was disrupted by the home team but it is still declared the winner.

Parents' melee cancels Hills West-Bellport game

Quick Summary
Fight involving parents at Hills West-Bellport boys basketball game leads to game's cancellation.

A melee involving the parents of a Half Hollow Hills West player forced the cancellation of last night's Bellport at Hills West boys basketball game late in the third quarter, according to Colts athletic director Joe Pennacchio.

"A Bellport kid belted [Hills West player] Aaron McCree in the mouth and his [McCree's] parents ran onto the court," said Pennacchio, who attended the League IV contest.

According to the Hills West AD, the referees announced, "Game over at this point," which would mean a 52-33 victory for the unbeaten Colts. Pennacchio said Section XI executive director Ed Cinelli told him the game was official and the stats would count.

Neither Cinelli nor the two coaches returned calls last night.

One Little Letter

Another in a continuing series of complaints about why we need editors and not technologists writing headlines. Even for the web.

 I suppose if two bands faced off, we would have a riff.  If you can't get through this link, consider yourself saved by a paywall.

Opinion: Riff between branches 'almost unprecedented'



When President Obama called out the Supreme Court, he set the stage for serious debate. ...

Awards to Editors

It's always nice to see ACES people and other editors recognized for their good work.

But Not Editing

AOL is booming, trying to create a significant news operation by hiring lots of journalists, but it's not the only one.

Press Release as Reporting

Am I naive about how bad things are in newsrooms that someone on Twitter  thinks this is good advice?

"Use an AP Stylebook when writing releases. The less editing a pub has 2 do, the better."

I'm not knocking the Twitterer (I HATE the word Tweet, the way some people hate the word "moist.")  I just wonder how bad things have gotten if her advice is actually valuable.

Huffington Post, PLEASE Hire Some Editors

I have been arguing for some time that web sites, half gossip and politics, half news, need to commit--either they're true journalism sites or they're not.

Many continue to go their own merry way, exhibiting no desire to clean up their act, improve their quality and so on. An exception is Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, which though left-leaning, does a lot of very good reporting, has decent headlines and never misleads.

Then there's the Huffington Post site, which continues to run really wacky "medical" stories and does not seem to care a whit about accuracy in headlines.

Even its own bloggers are getting annoyed. Taylor Marsh lets us know what she thinks about the bizarre "Bill Upstages Hillary...Once Again" on the story about Bill Clinton bringing back 2 journalists from North Korea, and parked it at the top of its page for most of the day. Plainly put, this is not a story about the Clintons, which one is getting the most attention or anything else but a piece about the ex-president's mission to North Korea. It's time for everyone to get over their obsession with the Clintons' relationship and simply report the news.

I care less about political viewpoints on these web sites--you don't have to spend more than a minute at Red State or Drudge or HuffPost to see the poitical viewpoint. But I do object to lousy, misdirected headlines if you think you're going to replace newspapers.

Hire some editors and do it right.

What We're Talking About

Several of us, colleagues at a newspaper years ago but now mostly scattered to the winds geographically and choices of other careers, have been engaged in an interesting e-mail discussion provoked by the E&P article by Thomas "Dennie" Williams about staff cutbacks and investigative reporting. Topics include the failure of newsroom people to answer e-mail or phone messages (absolutely not a new issue but one that seems to have worsened in recent years, some people think), the damage to reporting and editing from the cutbacks, the viability of print at all and a bunch of other matters.

It makes me wonder how many similar conversations are going on among other groups of former colleagues and how their observations might be brought together and put to good use. There's remarkably little harking back to the good old days in this e-mail exchange--although one person did manage to dig up a picture of me from 30 years ago-- but instead a lament, certainly, for the lost ability to tell good stories and root out the bad guys. You know, keeping true to that old that hokey line about comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable.

Join Up!

Now THIS is something I could get in to: the Typo Eradication Advancement League. I particularly like the militant tone of the name.

UPDATE, oh, just discovered that the Chicago Tribune ran a story about this TEAL.

Site Notes

Good morning, editors! I've posted some links to journalism job banks at the right and will add more in the coming days. Also new is a link to several environmental sites. I've been perusing the NYT's most e-mailed stories this week; the environment is, finally, what people are reading about. This morning's list is a good example: four of the top 10 e-mailed stories concern the environment.

Ignore environmental coverage at your peril, literally and figuratively.

If you haven't started blogging, I encourage you to do so. It's good for you! If your blog fits into one of the categories on the right and would like to be considered for inclusion, just drop me a note. Also, check out Editor Mom's views on freelance work.

Tech Smarts

Sometimes I think we make too much of a mystery of what is called search engine optimization, the ability to make sure all-powerful search engines find your article or other offering and list it first or among the first.

But there's no doubt new jobs are being created, even as old ones die off. The only thing that bothers me is that too much of this advice is coming from a TV guy turned internet guru; I'd like to hear more about where the news business is going from smart print people who have made the leap to web leadership.

Newspaper Editors Are Hiring Internet Savvy Professionals Angelique van Engelen - 11/11/2007 Jeff Jarvis recently wrote a description of what he thinks the quintessential 21st Century editor is like, by telling his audience all about recruitment ads of some renowned newspapers.
The roles which the papers were looking to hire new people for, sound pretty tech savvy. Jarvis cites the Guardian's hiring a tag editor. The people there will refer to the new recruit as a keyword manager. What he or she will be up to will amount to labelling online content, to ensure that it is consistent with the needs of readers as well as with editorial values. And, Jarvis informs us, The Times of London has hired a search editor. This person has got to be present in the editorial offices to explain to the editorial staff how the search structure of the web functions. What’s more, he or she has got to improve The Times’ newspaper article rankings in the search engines. No kidding. Jarvis writes at length about the very fact that these newspapers are hiring people in their editorial departments to fulfill these roles. I agree that this is quite interesting. It shows clearly that the media are beginning to understand the very scope and proportion of the change that is besetting their editorial departments. Which in essence is linked with the rise of greater transparency and subsequent participation of readers in the news digest process, previously unknown territory. Technological professionals who only ten years ago still appeared to be far removed from the insides of news rooms are now becoming indispensable to the editorial process. Search engine demi-gods are of great value to newspapers because to have a more searchable product is a matter of grave importance in the slash throat paper business.

Outsourcing in New Zealand

From Editor and Publisher today:

Wave of Future? New Zealand Papers Outsource Editorial Work


WELLINGTON Newspaper publisher APN News & Media began yesterday to outsource editorial production work, a plan that will be extended to five daily and three weekly newspapers by the end of the year, APN deputy chief executive Rick Neville said.

The changes mean news editing and layout operations at the nation's biggest daily, The New Zealand Herald, and a string of regional dailies will be done by an outside contractor, he said.

Neville, who has led the editorial production re-engineering project for APN, said he was confident readers would not notice the difference in the papers' editing and design.

He said although there was a lot of international interest in the project, "people will be sitting and making sure we can make it work first".

"I've got no doubt about it being a success," he said.

APN is half-owned by Dublin's Independent News & Media PLC, which publishes 175 newspapers and magazines around the world and operates radio stations and outdoor advertising sites in Australia and New Zealand.

IN&M is owned by Irish businessman Tony O'Reilly, whose Irish newspapers are taking up the same editorial outsourcing strategy.

Neville said 20 full-time sub-editors would work at contractor Pagemasters New Zealand "operating on an extension of APN's Cyber computer editorial production system" at a site 20 minutes from the editorial offices.

Pagemasters is a subsidiary of Australian Associated Press.

After six weeks, when all Herald editing and make-up had been transferred to Pagemasters, "we move to the Aucklander weekly ... the Herald on Sunday ... and in October we will start transferring to regional papers," Neville said.

And New Zealand journalists worry there's too much Paris Hilton, not enough real news.

Clear View, Shorter Distance

In this NYT magazine piece about the development of a new font that improves readibility of highway signs and is moving quickly into use in various print operations, I am especially impressed by how it cuts distance in half. (If you've ever driven across horizontal Pennsylvania, you'll appreciate the draw of shorter distances.)

Some of the improvement probably results from new, cleaner signage but no doubt the new font is easier to read.

Watch out, page designers--some of your managing editors who have read this story in Sunday's paper are going to be looking for this font.