As a reader far more often than a writer these days, I find that I’m bothered by different things than I was when the situation was reversed. A sports section that can’t get its agate correct consistently. A story that fails to include a person’s age when it is clearly relevant. Reporting that lacks adequate geographical references so I can locate an area.
I could go on, of course, but you get the idea. This hit home for me the other day when I heard from an editor about a story I had written. His first question was one that I couldn’t answer very well. I immediately realized that I’d fallen victim to one of my own observations: insufficient reporting, compounded by not writing well enough to camouflage it.
Inspired, I decided to list a few observations honed over years of reporting, writing and reading. I offer them in the hopes that they’ll help you, as well as remind me not to make the same missteps again.
1. If there’s a hole in your story — a spot where you didn’t do quite enough reporting to fully know and understand a point or issue — count on your editor to go after it like a gator snapping at a chicken carcass at a roadside attraction.
2. Turn off that auto-correct function. Immediately. If you don’t, you’ll never catch all the incorrect “its” and “it’s” or “you’re” and “your” and who knows what else.
3. Resist the urge to be clever or cute. If your readers want clever or cute, there are enough cat videos online to entertain them forever. (You can see I failed to follow this in item No. 1.)
4. For the vast majority of readers — millions of people reading local coverage — your work will be the first, and probably only, time they learn about your story. Do them a favor: Write clearly, succinctly and thoroughly.
5. Never, under any circumstances, assume anything you read online is correct. Judge the source and the documentation, and then check it out.
Following these isn’t likely to help you win a Pulitzer or get a raise, though it shouldn’t hurt. What it will do is greatly increase the odds that readers will come back for your next story. What could be more important than that?
George Edmonson retired after more than 30 years as a newspaper reporter and editor at several papers, including a few no longer in business, as well as USA Today and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
