Bill Elsen critiques the Technician as he did every day during his week-long stay. He also spent time with individual writers and other staff members working on career prospects, resumes and individual stories. Photo by Bradley Wilson.
lessons learned From Bill Elsen • Writing Coach N.C. State Student Media • October 2005 Rebecca Heslin Technician Editor
Deadline is our main problem and the majority of the little problems would probably be caught if we were making deadline.
Greg Behr Technician Features Editor
I really appreciate the small things Bill has pointed out to us that are detrimental to our credibility. The crappy headlines, the misuse of commas, recurrence of words within subheads and heads and pull quotes. We seem to slap a lot of the key things together at the end of the night, ie. captions, heads, subheads, pull quotes, etc. A little more concentration on these key elements will pay off a lot with our credibility.
Nick Pironio Technician Photo Editor
I learned about credibility how all our little mistakes make us not credible when things like the drunk driving article cause problems.
Josh Bassett Agromeck editor
We have to work as a team on every spread in the yearbook.
Schedule Sunday, Jan. 8, 2006 5:30 p.m. Dinner with editors/section editors who want to attend. Meet at office at 5 p.m. Porters on Hillsborough St.
Monday, Jan. 9 Noon – 2 p.m.: brown bag lunch with Agromeck and Nubian Message staff members 5 p.m.: Technician budget meeting and short critique of today’s paper and process 7 p.m.: Agromeck staff meeting and group critique of writing
Tuesday, Jan. 10 Noon – 2 p.m.: brown bag lunch with Technician news and sports staff 2-4 p.m.: resume critique, job discussion, editing, critique by appointment only 4-5:30 p.m.: work with individual writers on firstcome, first-serve, group basis 5:30 p.m.: Meet with Technician staff to discuss general problems from the last two days After, work with section editors on last-minute edits of pages
Wednesday, Jan. 11 Noon – 2 p.m.: brown bag lunch with Technician opinion and features staffs 2-4 p.m.: resume critique, job discussion, editing, critique by appointment only 4-6 p.m.: work with individual writers on firstcome, first-serve, group basis After, work with section editors on last-minute edits of pages
Thursday, Jan. 12 Noon – 2 p.m.: brown bag lunch with Agromeck and Nubian Message staff members 2-4 p.m.: resume critique, job discussion, editing, critique by appointment only 4-6 p.m.: work with individual writers on firstcome, first-serve, group basis After, work with section editors on last-minute edits of pages
Friday, Jan. 13 9 a.m.: Breakfast with editors, reporters who want to attend. Donuts provided.
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Contact info Bill Elsen 9699 Lindenbrook St. Fairfax, VA 22031 703/281-3866 elsenb@verizon.net
Bio Bill Elsen retired from The Washington Post at the end of March 2004. He is a contributing editor at Presstime, the monthly magazine of the Newspaper Association of America, and is career development director and an editor for reznetnews.org, an online newspaper produced by Native American college students. He is also a consultant, traveling to universities and conventions to work with student journalists. At The Post, Elsen started in sports as a copy editor and finished on the Metro Tab Desk as a slot. From January 1994 to May 2001, he was director of recruiting and hiring for the newsroom. Before that, he spent a month shy of 13 years as a night editor and assignment editor on the national desk. Elsen came to The Post in 1970 and worked as a sports copy editor, executive sports editor, metro staff writer, assistant foreign editor, night city editor and night news editor. Before joining The Post, he was a reporter in Saigon, Vietnam, for Stars and Stripes; a reporter and copy editor for the Nashville (Tenn.) Banner; a sports copy editor for the Tennessean in Nashville; and a sports writer/editor for the Washington (D.C.) Daily News. Elsen has taught at the Editing Program for Minority Journalists at the University of Arizona; the American Indian Journalism Institute at the University of South Dakota; the Native American Newspaper Career Conference at Custer, S.D.; the Oklahoma Institute for Diversity in Journalism at the University of Oklahoma; the College of Journalism at the University of Maryland; and the Journalism Institute for High School Students at Catholic University of America in Washington. He has been on the faculty of the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association’s summer workshop in Chapel Hill since 1994. In the 2004-05 academic year, he consulted at DePauw, Vanderbilt, Iowa State and Kansas State universities and the University of South Dakota. In the current academic year, he has consulted at the University of Nebraska, the University of Mississippi and the University of Montana. Elsen has also conducted workshops at the American Press Institute, a National Writers Workshop and conventions of the American Copy Editors Society. He teaches journalism workshops for high school and college students and at state and national scholastic press conventions. In March 2002, Elsen was presented the Charles R. O’Malley Award for Excellence in Teaching by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association at Columbia University. In 1979, he was awarded CSPA’s Gold Key. In June 2003, he was given the Kay Phillips Distinguished Service Award by the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association at the University of North Carolina. He is a member of College Media Advisers, the American Copy Editors Society, the Native American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association.
Day 1 Greg Behr I learned that we need to check the small things like the editing of photos (the Frisbee picture on the front page was cropped crappy) and that small glaring errors stick out a lot. We need to start looking at the paper as something that would represent us as if we only published once a month and not daily.
Katie Graf
Bill’s critique was very fair, I thought. He reminded us that we need to address the little design issues (the appearances of headlines, to use or not to use a dash in front of the person’s name after a pull quote, a pull quote shouldn’t be set next to the place the quote occurs in the story, etc.) Most of his critique was directed at the writers and section editors and all of his points for them were reasonable (be succinct, watch your grammar, make headlines simple yet interesting, etc.) Bill really knows his stuff and I’m glad he’s here :)
Nick Pironio
We first need complete captions, second should include random information that relates to the picture that is not mentioned in the copy and the headlines should be consistent lines. After that I remember him talking about condensing stories and that’s about it. I enjoyed it and hope that he does the same today but hopefully more harsh if we don’t know what we are doing wrong then how can we fix it?
Jake Seaton
What I took away from Bill’s critique is repeating words in headlines and subheads. I know it’s something I have been guilty of and I watched for it when I wrote the head and subhead in today’s paper.
Rebecca Heslin
It was great to have someone from the outside critique the paper and be blunt about it. The staff was very receptive, despite the lengthiness of yesterday’s budget meeting. He pointed out very obvious mistakes we’re making but failing to notice in the big picture. Things like, having the same words in a headline and subhead. Things we’ve heard a thousand times but just don’t see anymore. Another main idea I got out of it was the need to be concise. We use too many words to take up space sometimes. Our headlines are pretty bad. I attribute this to no one knowing whose job it is to write the heads. Bill also “poked fun” at us writing those staff reports that could be written as actual stories, with bylines, instead of the press release regurgitation we do now. Inconsistency is an obvious problem, yet again, people seem to be so rushed close to deadline they fail to step back and look at it on a bigger picture. In other words, deadline is our main problem and the majority of the little problems would probably be caught if we were making deadline! As you can see, going to bed at 2 a.m. and waking up at 730 a.m. is already making me an unhappy person. I don’t want to make the office environment a negative one, as Pat always claimed I did, but I want people to get it through their heads how important deadline is. This is far passed ridiculous.
Tanner Kroeger
The game stories were outdated, but the sidebars were a nice way to cover those games. I agree with him, and I’ll adjust for the future.
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Greg Behr
I really appreciate the small things Bill has pointed out to us that are detrimental to our credibility. The crappy headlines, the misuse of commas, recurrence of words within subheads and heads and pull quotes. We seem to slap a lot of the key things together at the end of the night, ie. captions, heads, subheads, pull quotes, etc. I think a little more concentration on these key elements will pay off a lot with our credibility. He thought the first two Wolf Facts should have been one. I suppose they could have been one, but I wouldn’t have cut any copy. With that said, two separate heads is a nice division for the reader.
Day 2 Nick Pironio
I realized I need to pay more attention on picture placement making sure they are done correctly and some word smithing on the captions.
Tyler Dukes
The underlying theme in almost everything I am learning is to use space wisely. Don’t repeat words. Don’t overuse words. Simplify and economize the space so that the reader can get as much information in as little effort as possible. That means cutting wordiness, using different content for captions, heads, subheads, leads and nut grafs.
Tanner Kroeger
Eliminate wordiness. If five words can be summarized with one verb — verb it. In three sentence quotes, attribute the quote after the first sentence. Do some “reporting” in columns. In sports, what’s beneath the surface? If we lost both ACC games, but only by a combined 4 points, that’s important. Research stats more. Don’t just use the “canned crap from coaches.” We need to work on this, no doubt.
Rebecca Heslin
Just from chatting with him today, I learned how strongly someone from the outside can influence our staff. All it took was him challenging us on specific issues to get some of our hard-to-change editors to change their bad habits. I debated at first if this was just a bad time for him to be here because people are still all over the place, but I like the idea of hammering this stuff out as early as possible. It might be slowing us down a little production wise, but I’m willing to sacrifice my salary a little if we can take care of some of our big-picture problems.
Greg Behr
Small problems will give us the credibility that would allow us to not be so hurt by a stupid column like Gaither’s. I also learned that we need to do a little more reporting than we are used to. Calls to the Colbert Show and more in depth reporting on the Sri Lanka journal idea would make the stories so much better. I also feel that we should work harder to show writers the standards we have set, because obviously they are not aware of them.
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Day 3 Rebecca Heslin
The critique went wonderfully as usual. Bill really harped on how the little things dig away at a paper’s credibility. He called people out for writing things that clearly didn’t make sense merely for the sake of space. Jason writes lots of sentences like that. He pointed out the obvious things that are wrong with the sports page such as repeating things in headlines still. In several instances, they would have the sport in the kicker, the headline, the subhead and the lead. “Vollyballers” is not a word and volleyball is spelled with an e. He provided me with a poem to share with the editorial board about how spell check catches totally miss spelled words but not the words that are spelled correctly but mean a different thing than intended. He’s noticed several of those in our paper. He explained the differences in the curved and straight quotations with was helpful and really impacted people, especially Clark, who manually went through and changed every quote mark on his page last night.
Tyler Dukes
I was only in the office for three hours or so yesterday, but I was pleased to see Bill’s critique in that it looks like we are somewhat improving. He also rehashed some of the stories we edited yesterday, telling us how a few more phone calls or a few more interview questions add a great deal of depth to the story. He worked with Patrick Gleason and Megan Riley in yesterday’s paper and they really learned a lot, I think, from some of the things he’s been telling us all week.
Nick Pironio
I learned about credibility how all our little mistakes make us not credible when things like the drunk driving article cause problems. I also learned that we need to check our edits before we agree to put them on the paper.
Jake Seaton
From meeting with Bill on Wednesday regarding my resume and clips, the biggest things I learned were playing out my name larger, establishing a new email address and when I do (finally) graduate, my education moves below my work experience and above my references. As of now, my name is set in the same font weight as the rest of my resume and, according to Bill, I should blow it up to double the current font size and center it at the top of the page so it stands out. As per my e-mail address, Bill says it is important to establish a professional e-mail address because many employers will scan over any contact information that appears juvenile. While I feel I didn’t take much away from Bill’s actual critique of Wednesday’s newspaper, I did find it interesting that the smaller mistakes in the paper will highlight the larger issues, such as the drunk driving column. He says the smaller mistakes become glaring when there are larger issues at hand.
Josh Harrell
I loved having Bill here, he was a great help. I was able to meet with him oneone-one three times and we went over everything from resumes and critiques of my stories to what to look for in internships and what the business is like. I felt I was able to take advantage of a great opportunity. He was very nice to all of us, even if he was blunt in some of his comments. He helped me out tremendously with my resume and gave me things to look for in my next stories. It was great to talk to someone who has done the things I want to do — it gave me a good perspective of the things I need to do.
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Katie Graf
Like all the others, Bill’s last critique was fair. I’m sure he marked a lot of minor mistakes, but he didn’t point out every little thing that was done wrong. He let us know what we really needed to look at. He brought to our attention how each mistake we print chips away at our credibility. Most of our minor mistakes are printed because we run out of time when editing pages—but that’s no excuse. He also drilled in the same mantra you have: INTERNAL CONSISTENCY. I believe I used that phrase at least once every day last week. I’m more conscious of the importance of that factor. I’m also more conscious of the importance of headline content and appearance. Bill questioned the sports cutout and that sparked a conversation among the editors of how they should be displayed – that issue is now settled. In general, I think Bill has us thinking more seriously and professionally about the paper. That should certainly help us out!
Rebecca Heslin
We spent some time in the afternoon discussing the division of labor around the office some more. We talked about the importance of delegating tasks to others as well as improvements that had been made throughout the week such as using N.C. State too often and the same words in heads and subheads again. We noticed a lot of improvement over the course of the week all in all. I really enjoyed having dinner with him last night and we tossed around lots of story ideas. All in all, having Bill here for the past week provided irreplaceable training. When the students don’t realize they are receiving training, they get a lot more out of it I’ve found!
Greg Behr
Last night, and overall this week, was about the little details that diminish the credibility of the paper as a whole. We can break the biggest stories and have the most in depth coverage but if we have typos, design errors and the paper is sloppily put together those great stories won’t matter. We need to realize that most readers are looking at the paper very critically and that we need to do a lot more planning and work in advance so we can have the credibility we desire.
Josh Harrell
The main thing that I personally took out of my visits with Bill is that I am doing the right thing to position myself for the job I’m hoping for after college. He said to increase your internship each year (as in a larger circulation) and to get all the writing and leadership practice you can out of Technician. He encouraged interaction with my journalism professors and went over my tennis story from last week, pointing out things that didn’t need to be in the story (words like passion and number error), and what I could add to the story (more comments from players).
Clark Leonard
I learned that we need to be careful to avoid repeating words from our headlines in our summary heads. Also, I learned that we need to be especially careful of titles (e.g. “vollyball”). The time working on my resume with Bill was an especially useful time that taught me a great deal about how to organize my resume. Over the week, I learned from Bill to pay attention to the smallest details and to be as concise as possible.
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Agromeck Austin Dowd
One of the biggest things that Agromeck staff kept hearing from Bill Elsen was the need for consistency between the photos and the story. The number one problem he picked was that many of our stories will discuss a person or action which isn’t pictured on the page. One of the solutions for this was making sure that the photographers and the writers are keeping in communication during the process of the story. We designed new assignment sheets which included entry space for reporter and photographer contact information. We also made it a requirement for reporters to come in and discuss story angles and focuses with the editors in charge so that information can be relayed to the photographers. In critiques of my own writing, Elsen noted that many of my copy editing mistakes were mistakes that I made over and over. He noted that while this was a current problem, it wasn’t anything bad, because I now know what I’m doing wrong and can look out for that. He enjoyed my leads and quotes but also felt that the photos for the story didn’t support the copy well because many of the people quoted in my story were not pictured.
Josh Bassett Bill re-emphasized the fact that we have to work as a team on every spread in the yearbook. He noticed the spreads like Shack-a-Thon where the photos had absolutely nothing to do with the story about spending a night in the Brickyard and said it was a perfect example of not working as a team. The photographer and writer need to complete assignments together, help each other out. This will not only make writing stories and taking photos easier, but it will ensure continuity of the coverage. The second point Bill made about our completed spreads was the fact that our headline and subheads sometimes shared words. He said subheads and headlines should not use the same words twice. For example, on the Campus Cribs page we used the headline “A home away from home.” The subhead read “Students add creativity and comfort to create a home for the school year.” Bill said it would have been a better subhead/headline if they didn’t share the same word “home.” Also, a lot of our pages have subheads that fall short, especially on the second line. The subhead just dies half way across the allotted space. Bill said we needed to come up with subheads that filled the space.
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The following are names of the people on the editorial board of the Technician. Each member of the editorial board was supposed to submit “lessons learned� every day as part of the regular training evaluation, at least four evaluations. To the right of their name is the number of evaluations actually received from them. Other media staff members participated on a more casual basis and had no minimum expectations. Technician Editor............................................... Rebecca Heslin............................. 4 News Editor................................... Tyler Dukes...................................2 Deputy News Editor.................. Haley Huie...................................... 0 Deputy News Editor.................. Kasey Butler.................................. 0 Science & Tech Editor................ Cynthia Marvin............................0 Viewpoint Editor......................... Jason Eder.....................................0 Sports Editor................................. Tanner Kroeger............................ 2 Deputy Sports Editor................ Josh Harrell.................................... 2 Deputy Sports Editor................ Clark Leonard............................... 1 Features Editor............................. Jake Seaton................................... 2 Features Editor............................. Greg Behr........................................ 4 Design Editor................................ Win Bassett.................................... 0 Design Editor................................ Katie Graf........................................ 2 Photo Editor.................................. Nick Pironio................................... 3 Agromeck Editor............................................... Josh Bassett................................... 1 Managing Editor......................... Austin Dowd.................................1 Nubian Message Although offered, no member of the Nubian Message staff participated in any of the training or critique services offered by Bill Elsen.
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