First of all, as an experiment, I have not edited this to see how well of a point I can make during a stream of conciousness thing. No backspaces, no jumping back to catch anything. Just bearing my errors for the world to see. Should articles be like this - no. There needs to be some sort of order, otherwise newspaper will become more obsolete, and as easily ignorable as the countless blogs out there about someone ranting about something while throwing organization and common courtesy out the window.
This brings me to my point.
The only part of our guest speaker's presentation I found controversial and misinformed was when he told us that AP Style doesn't really matter at all and that if we pay attention to making sure our product is perfect then we aren't allowing innovation to happen.
Personally, in my capacity as news editor at TNH, I am constantly trying to find ways to improve the paper. That does include new web features to make our site worthwhile (since it really isn't at the moment), and this is while I am editing to make sure our content is coherrent.
Things do need to be edited, and I feel that saying focusing on editing takes away from focusing on innovation is ridiculous. Fixing a mispelled name or dangling modifier, or say not publishing an article which is plagerized from a press release and in no way can be printed anyway, IS NOT RESTRICTING INNOVATION! Is it innovative to steal someone else's information, rewrite it badly, and pass it off as your own? No. No it isn't. Thinking let's toss something else in here - whether it be a graphic, picture, whatever - to help make a point clearer and make the article enjoyable is both editing and innovative as new things can be done with art.
How is style restricting innovation? I think if you are stuck in your ways, and have the worst tunnel vision in history, then innovation is halted. There are ways for both to exist in one realm. The style can be changed (Web site? Are you serious? This is one AP Style rule which needs to die) for the better, but in no way should it be blamed for blocking innovation. That's when the man behind the curtain needs to take charge and stop doing the same ol' charade.
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2 comments:
Kyle -
Thanks for your comments.
Actually - I did not recommend abandoning AP Style or lowering your standards.
However I do advocate not letting perfectionism stand in the way of accomplishing new or important things.
The bottom line is that we are in the business of communicating information to our audience. It needs to be accurate, but increasingly it also needs to be fast and focused - both in content and in delivery medium.
So yes, I would rather have an important breaking news item up on the Web site with a small style error rather than having it sit on an editor's desk for 90 minutes until they have the time to edit it.
But, the wire services have been experts at rapid publication and updating for years. Newspapers just need to learn how to add these skills to their repertoir without giving up on accuracy or fairness.
Good luck.
Damon
Kyle- I like how you wrote your blog in a quick unedited style to see how it came out. It came out great. You are 100 percent correct you can follow style and still be innovative. In the end it just makes the job we are doing more challenging, but that is not something that journalists should shy away from.
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