Journalism Training Blog

Merrill Perlman, former director of copy desks at The New York Times, gave us some great strategies for editing.

Here are some things that should set off alarm bells while you’re editing:

• Coincidence: Anything in a story that makes you say, “What a coincidence.” One time I was editing a crime story and one suspect’s last name was the same as another’s first name. It turns out it was right, but it definitely was enough of a coincidence that I asked about it.
• Internal inconsistency: A community event takes place in East Oakland, but everyone quoted in the story is from West Oakland.
• Repetition: A person’s last name is the same as the street he lives on — John MacArthur on MacArthur Boulevard. The same numerals are used in different numbers — the city will shut down for 14 days to save $1.4 million dollars.
• Superlatives and modifiers: Longest bridge, best school, most diverse, etc. If you’re not sure, it’s better to fudge it a bit — one of the longest, among the most diverse, etc.
• Foreign languages: Recognize patterns and see what doesn’t fit in to those. For example, a double vowel in a name that’s supposed to be German. Usually, a long vowel in German is represented as a vowel followed by an h, while some other Germanic languages more commonly use double vowels (think Wahlberg vs. Waalberg). Or (thanks to Nate Tabak for this one) someone from Slovakia whose name ends in -ic, which is a suffix more commonly associated with Bosnian/Serbian/Croation/Slovenian names.
• What is corrected a lot? Know your publication’s common errors and corrections, as well as those you often miss/make.
• Errors often travel in pairs: If you see something to check, check related things too. For example, if you’re checking the spelling of someone’s name, check his title as well.
• I’ll add  weasel words: These are words like more, many, some, few, often, likely and seems. When too many of them are used, you have to ask yourself whether your story is actually saying anything. Here’s the Jack Shafer piece from Slate that criticizes the use of such words in a New York Times article.

Always check these things:

• Names
• Addresses, Web sites, phone numbers: Not just the ones we’re actually refering people to. Merrill brought up a good example — perhaps a story makes a joking reference, like “It’s not as if she’s working for icandoanything.com.” Well, what if it turns out that’s a porn Web site? (No, it’s not. I just checked.)
• Dates: Historical dates, but also keep an eye out for inconsistencies, like (as I write this in 2009) a story that says someone born in 1995 had his license suspended after a drunken driving conviction.
• Numbers: Do they add up, and do they make sense?

So now that you’re attempting to check out so many things, how do you do it? Here are some more tips from Merrill:

• Search what you know, not what you don’t. If you’re checking the spelling of a name, don’t type the name into Google. Search for related things that will bring you to the right answer, like the company the person works for and his title.
• Get more than one source whenever you can.
• Sometimes search engines will correct your incorrect entry. For example, if you type “Katherine Hepburn” into Google, it will come back with “Did you mean: Katharine Hepburn.” But the results will include the “Katherine” spelling, so make sure to choose the most reliable sources.
• Don’t forget about books — almanacs, atlases, encyclopedias, phone books, etc.
• Don’t bet your publication’s reputation on the Wikipedia’s accuracy. Here’s why.
• Check a fact with the reporter before changing it. For example, a story calls someone a vice president of a company, but the company Web site calls the person an assistant vice president. A company’s Web site may not reflect the person’s recent promotion, but maybe your reporter knows about it.
• Tell your colleagues about mistakes you find on the Web and in your own publication. That way, your colleagues won’t continue to check facts on a Web site that has incorrect information. And your colleagues will be alerted to incorrect information that’s run in your publication, so no one will repeat the mistake.