A Journalist, Activist and Researcher.
Editing
Good editing to me means more than paying scrupulous attention to the spellings and grammar of everything that appears in our magazine and on our website. It means communicating with writers frequently (both on and offline), ensuring the story's structure is solid and has meaning, maintaining the writer's own unique voice and helping polish and refurbish the draft until it is as perfect as it can be.
The Editing Process
To ensure that every story going up on our website or being printed in the magazine meets our standards, each article sees at least five sets of eyes before being approved, twice by the section editors and thrice by the copy editors, which includes those on the Editorial Team. Fully-designed pages also see another five sets of eyes before being exported and sent off to the printers.
As a Features editor last year, I noticed that many stories were lacking a central focus or theme - there was very little to take from the article, from a reader's standpoint. Thus, I recommended at my end of the year presentation that we institute an Angle edit for the upcoming year, where section editors will converse with each writer to ensure that the reporter knows what story they're chasing and what details they're looking for. At the start of the year, this new edit was confusing to the second and third-year staff writers, so I clarified what the Angle edit sought to do through our Facebook group. This Angle edit is now used by all writers and requires a section editor's initial on the Edits and Pitches spreadsheet, the medium through which we track the progress of all stories.
Edits
BIBs and CHADs: One of the first stories I edited as a Features editor was about a group of boys, dubbed the BIBS for B-----y Indian Boys, who have been close friends since 6th grade and find time out of their busy schedules to regularly play basketball together, and how they were similar or different to another group called the Chads, who bonded over their love for math and science. The main issue with this story was structure, as one of the sources (the Chads) did not provide as much content and information as the BIBs. Therefore, it was hard for the staff writers to combine the two groups’ interviews under one story that was both cohesive and well-balanced. In my edits, I suggested that they treat the BIBs as the main source and integrate the Chads’ quotes based off of what the BIBs said; for example, when the BIBs explained that it was basketball that united them, the staff writers would add that similarly, the Chads were united by their love for physics. I edited this story on Google Docs and by communicating with one of the writers via Messenger.
Dealing with stress: Another story I edited was an editorial about the inefficiency of the school-taught methods of dealing with stress with the original angle being that Monta Vista HS doesn't do enough to help students' mental health. The original draft of the story was very well-written but extremely one-sided; it almost seemed to target the counselors for not being able to do enough without taking into consideration the large school population and the immigrant/cultural backgrounds of many students. I worked with this reporter, advising him to first interview the counselors to understand their view on this story, make an outline of the main points and gather hard facts and evidence to support his claim. To answer all his questions, I not only communicated with him via Messenger but also called him several times to understand his perspective and approach. As an editor, I believe it is important to allow the writers' voices to shine and not impose my own views upon anyone else's.
Feature on librarians: A story about the librarians at the local library was reported well but contained many grammar and punctuation errors. The story was written in full Features’ style with both verve and imagery; however, there were certain points in the article where subject-verb-agreement was not followed or there were problems with ambiguous pronouns. Thus, my edits focused mainly on these issues. Click here to view my edits: http://bit.ly/2uKReiH.