Saturday, July 30, 2011

Missing

The painful reality is setting in. I've missed Friday and Saturday night with my daughter as I'm at work and she's at home playing and watching TV without me . . .
My wife's attending a 3 night Christian concert which began yesterday and I'm not able to be with her and enjoy the concert too . . .
Though I have the mornings with her and pockets of time with my daughter, I miss them and the night events I can no longer attend . . .
Is the sacrifice worth it? Only time will tell.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Careful always

Meticulous 1. Extremely careful and precise or 2. Extremely or excessively concerned with details.

Yup, that's the word that sum's up an editors work ethic and standard whenever he/she is editing. I learnt this the last few days after my edited reports where edited by senior editors and returned to me with many red markings/corrections (now I feel what my students felt . . .). What did the corrections in red whisper loudly to me?

  1. be careful when deleting unwanted words and phrases - make sure you completely deleted everything
  2. double check the days/dates mentioned (past and future events can be wrongly reported if you screw this matter up)
  3. when there's a short point or sentence here and there, find somewhere in another paragraph to slip it in.
Well that's it for now. Gotta go, gotta be meticulous, man!

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Better rewriting of news reports

What do you mean by this?
What is this?
Never cause your reader to ask these questions when reading a news report you edited is the latest advice I got.
I had allowed certain acronyms and names slip through that lacked explanation or was not understood and I did not call up the writers to clarify.
Also I was not sensitive enough to catch possible contradicting information in one or two of the reports edited yesterday.
Lastly, I need to make sure all information given is complete and learn to ask “Why?” and “What’s this?” when reading a piece to ensure it is complete and self-explanatory.
So much to learn and making mistakes here and there  . . . hope it won’t cost me . . .

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Show and tell?

What's wrong with this heading?

Exciting plans for SJB unveiled

Clue: it has something to do with the rule "Show don't tell"
Apparently for newspaper headings, you don't include unnecessary adjectives to express opinion (i.e. exciting). Just 'show' what has happened or been done.

Trees to be planted at SJB 

or

SJB's green corridor to be extended

Another lesson to learn . . .

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Two heads are better

I've made some improvement with my headers but there’s still so much room for improvement. For example, for an article about a man who published a book on his life on his 80th birthday, I created the heading “80th birthday book reveals author’s colourful life”. The heading was finally changed (and improved) by better editors to read “Octogenarian publishes memoirs”! Where did he find ‘octogenarian’? And ‘memoirs’ for ‘book on colourful life’ was just brilliant!

My other headers (I write about 6-12 headers for reports I am assigned to edit) that were changed reveal a lack on my part – I didn’t mention ‘who’ in the headline. “More campaigns promised” became “SMC promises more drives . . .” and “. . . family day a big success” to “. . . family day a big success for members

Lastly, I also have a tremendous opportunity to better my editing skills. A senior editor took one of my edited articles and improved on it, showing me how much more I could have done to create a better edited report. I realise redundancy of words is a no-no and flow of information is important. Lastly, if only one guy is quoted saying this and that throughout the report, I can drop the “he said” and “he added” usually used. Thanks T.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Oh my headers

The heading for a news report is very important but one requires a unique skill to be able to create correct and interesting ones. I realised this when several headings I had okayed were changed before printing and the corrected ones were, I believe, better. I am thankful for these examples and the challenge to create better headings. Here are some samples of before and after headings:

B: Woman loses bag in car as she pops into convenience store
A: Woman loses expensive items when motorcyclist steals bag

B: Foreign duo held over RM480000 from robberies
A: Foreign duo detained to help in probe into robberies

B; Robbery spills into the great Rajang
A: Armed duo rob boat skipper

There's much to learn by just comparing these before and after headings - go figure!

Friday, July 15, 2011

Of writers and layout guys

Back to work after two days off. 
Today I learnt that as an editor I am not to assume what the reporter has written is completely correct and acceptable - I can rearrange paragraphs, rephrase sentences and even alter the focus of the news if the one selected by the writer is considered less important as opposed to something else also in the report. Even so, contacting the reporter first to discuss what he/she wrote and to run through changes you plan to make is a good idea. 
The page editing is also challenging especially when there are mistakes and changes you must make quickly and correctly before the page is approved and sent for printing. Today one of the layout guys was slow in preparing one of the pages I was assigned to edit - had to wait about 1 1/2 hours to get the finished page. Even so, glad he managed to get it done before 11 pm.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Ooops . . . oh no!

I made a grammatical error in one of the headlines last night so got called by the boss for a drink and a friendly rebuke cum explanation on my mistake and how to improve. This has made me more cautious and less confident in my editing abilities but this is how one learns . . .
Just realised I have to cancel several speaking engagements as they are all at night on days I am working. Will my social life (meetings, functions etc.) and ministry (night meetings) be affected by my work-at-night schedule to the point of it being detrimental? Only time will tell . . .
I'm on leave for the next two days (Wednesday and Thursday are my present off days).

New Life!

Yesterday I began a new career as an editor at the Borneo Post. Yes, I resigned from Lodge International School (goodbye school life and demands) to take up something new and challenging. It's interesting many ask me, "So what actually does an editor do?" Well, I'm slowly finding out.  I started yesterday by editing  8 news articles and then edited page 3 of the newspaper (yes, editing means checking the written work to ensure its readable, content-correct and grammatically right - just like what I did for all the essays my students wrote!). I got to work around 2 pm and finally finished my assigned task around 11.30 pm. Picked up some do's and don't's and began building some vital relationships.