In August, Sherry and I wrote about a new name-verification policy The Eagle put in place. (You can read the posts here and here.) That month, misspelled names were 35 percent of our corrections.
With the new policy in place, the percentage of corrections from misspelled names has plummeted. In September it was 9 percent (two corrections); in October it was 4 percent (one correction).
While even one misspelled name is too many, I’m heartened by the numbers.
— Michael
Last week I wrote about how the Associated Press stylebook sets a consistent tone in The Eagle and at Kansas.com for the words, phrases and descriptions we use. There is, however, a resource we turn to before it: The Eagle stylebook
Like the Associated Press’, our stylebook is a guide for members of the newsroom on what’s correct. Where we’re different is ours is concerned specifically with this area and our readers.
Here, with some examples, is how we use it.
As a guide to local idiom:
Big Ditch A proper name to Eagle readers and descriptive shorthand for the Wichita-Valley Center Floodway. Big Ditch is acceptable in passing references. A story about the Big Ditch should explain what it is.
As a general reminder:
V8, V-8 V8 is the drink; a V-8 is a car engine. When he drank from his V-8, he burned his lips.
As a pronunciation guide:
Marais des Cygnes River, Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge Marais des Cygnes is "marsh of the swans" in French. In Kansan, it’s pronounced "MAIR-ree-duh-SEEN."
As a direction for usage:
irony Irony is defined as the incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result. Things said to be ironic rarely are; rather, they are usually just coincidental.
As a guide to local places and landmarks:
St. Mary’s Cathedral The seat of the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, at Central and Broadway. St. Mary’s is the name most people recognize, and thus The Eagle prefers it, but the cathedral’s proper full name is Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, and that should be noted in any story that mentions the cathedral more than just in passing.
The inscription above the cathedral’s portico is Sancta Maria Mater Dei Ora Pro Nobis, Latin for "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us," words from the Catholic prayer "Hail Mary."
As direction to erase overused metaphors:
Oz When writing, keep in mind that every "Wizard of Oz" metaphor possible has already been explored in The Eagle.
But if you can’t resist, remember that Kansas is not Oz. Oz is someplace unlike Kansas that makes you wish you were back here.
As I said above, it’s the first place we turn for guidance. That’s good, as some of our style points don’t agree with the Associated Press’, but that’s a topic for another post.
— Michael
We’re now caught up on our monthly headline contest. Here are the winners for September.
In first place is a wonderful play on words by our newest copy editor, Cori Dodds.
Re-riding history
This appeared over a story about a Kansas stop on the Great Santa Fe Trail Horse Race.
Second place went to online producer/sports guru Josh Wood for his headline on the story of Kansas State’s 41-21 victory at Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium:
Austin-tacious
Third place went to copy editor Julie Mah for her work on the latest concept in energy:
Out of algae,
a green idea
Well done, everyone.
See an Eagle headline you like or think is noteworthy? Drop me a line.
— Michael
The future of journalism is a topic much-discussed by those in the industry.
Will stories and other forms of information be shared solely through digital means or will a printed paper be valued as a respite from an increasingly fast-paced world?
The World Association of Newspapers asked a number of futurists and media experts what they thought the newspaper of 2020 would look like.
You can find their thoughts here.
— Michael
The stylebook is a guide for writers and editors — really anyone that writes about current events. It is a compendium of rules and guidelines on spelling and usage and has a smattering of pertinent facts. In the foreword to the 2002 edition, president Louis Boccardi described it as “a reference book for terms and topics commonly encountered in news writing.â€
For example, do you use even-steven or even-stephen? Protester or protestor? The stylebook says the former in both cases. Another entry reads:
Exxon Mobil Corp. Energy corporation formed from the 1999 merger of Exxon and Mobil, both formerly part of Standard Oil. ExxonMobil is acceptable as a subsequent reference to the official corporate name.
Headquarters is in Irving, Texas, with exploration, production and chemical operations based in Houston.
The book also contains sports guidelines, business guidelines, a guide to punctuation and a briefing on media law.
From AAA to ZIP code, the stylebook helps set a consistent tone in The Eagle and at Kansas.com for the words, phrases and descriptions we use.
— Michael
Fans of the Maize and North football teams got Saturday’s paper and had to wonder why The Eagle had a score of the game but nothing else — no story, no statistics.
Trust me, it’s not from a lack of trying, and it’s a good time for me to explain how we get our high school football coverage in the paper.
We have two full-time reporters and a stable of 6-7 correspondents available to cover games. On Friday, we sent reporters to eight games. After those eight games, we rely on coaches or athletic directors to call us with statistics from every other game in Sedgwick, Butler and Harvey counties. For decades, the protocol has been that the home team is supposed to call area newspapers (not just us).
For the bigger area schools, we do "game boxes," which consist of 3-4 paragraphs about the game and full statistics. That’s what we had planned for North at Maize when we got the call.
But the call never came. Realizing Maize hadn’t called, we reached the Maize coach by phone and asked for his statistics. He said they were at the school and he would send them to us on Monday. We had no luck reaching the North coach.
Our frustration level was pretty high Friday night. We know that Maize and North have two of the area’s larger fan bases and would love to have had details about the game in the paper.
– Kirk
Well, that’s what some researchers predict.
— Michael
Each month members of the newsroom vote on their favorite headlines of the past month. Here are the winners for August (Yep, we’re still a little behind).
In first place is this headline by copy desk chief Michael Roehrman.
Concrete evidence
This appeared over a story about the city closing a crumbling bridge on South Broadway.
Second place went to a great play on words that sports editor Kirk Seminoff put over a Bob Lutz column about Barry Bonds’ asterisk-inducing home-run record:
All over
but the
doubting
Third place went to Michael for the headline on a story about a Wisconsin man who tried to rob a nun who had taken a vow of poverty.
He tries to
steal money,
he gets nun
See an Eagle headline you like or think is noteworthy? Drop me a line.
— Michael
Roy Peter Clark offers a challenge to journalists and citizens: Read the newspaper. The print edition. He characterizes this as a duty we must embrace as we face an ever-shifting media landscape. Here’s his essay: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=129470.
Of course journalists ought to be reading newspapers every day. As an editor at The Eagle, I have a duty every day to read our paper. But that said, I and everyone else in our newsroom have a duty to do what we can to make the paper and the content on our website so compelling that readers, including those of us in the newsroom, feel drawn to read it out every day.
Theresa
What makes for a great newspaper photograph?
There are many things, of course.
But one of the most important is that an image tells a story immediately, without words.
That’s what Fernando Salazar’s photo at left does. Salazar won our most recent in-house photo contest with this shot of a Kansas Humane Society worker holding a dog before it was euthanized.
And though voters didn’t give a reason for picking their winner, it’s safe to say that the emotion captured in this image affected many of them.
The touching embrace of worker and dog tells the story in an instant: compassion for an animal whose life is about to end.
The photo was part of a Sunday front-page story about Wichita’s animal shelters, which euthanized roughly 10,000 adoptable pets last year.
That’s a painful statistic, and Salazar’s photograph captures a tender moment before the pain. This mixed-breed dog, which was unsociable, would not live much longer.
The worker feels the impending loss, as do we.
That’s the heart of the story, told without words. Something only a great photograph can do.
– Arlice
