Ombudswoman #3

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

Last week, Barnard President Judith Shapiro announced that she is going to resign, which was pretty big news (we ran two articles on it: here and here). The headline, though, was bigger than the news. Bwog linked to the articles in QuickSpec with the tag: “PREZSHAP TO RESIGN OMG!!! (now, what font size do they use for assassinations or declarations of war?).” And, well, they make a point. While Spectator probably won’t be announcing assassinations or declarations of war any time soon, there is a sense that a headline that big leaves little room for bigger news. And we could have bigger news than the president of Barnard resigning.

How big would the headline be if PrezBo resigned? Or if a top administrator were arrested for tax fraud? Or if Columbia got a donation so large it could beat Harvard’s endowment? Or if Low blew up? I know that none of those things are particularly likely (though they would all make for a good time so far as journalism is concerned and some of them are not completely insane), but if those things happened, our headline really couldn’t get that much larger.

Why does this matter so much? Because as depressing as it may be, more people read the headlines than read the articles in newspapers and because the placement and size of headlines tells readers how important an event or story is. Above the fold or below the fold? Size? Bold? Centered? All these decisions mean something. And if a headline is huge, well, then the news better be that important.

I do think Shapiro’s resignation is a big deal. But so was David Charlow’s suspension, so was the next day’s $400 million donation to Columbia, so was the stage being rushed during the Minuteman Project’s speech last semester. And none of those got headlines nearly as big as Shapiro’s resignation. Nor did SEAS Dean Zvi Galil’s announcement last semester that he was leaving Columbia for Tel Aviv University. And while that announcement was less huge in important ways, that article got a normal one-column lede-article headline that doesn’t compare at all to the size of the Shapiro headline.

Each day’s Spectator is not an isolated group of articles; it is a part of a cohesive whole that is what Spec puts out each day. And that means, the news is all in relation to the news we published before the news we will publish afterward, and that means all that should be taken into account when the headline size is decided.

The headline also looked even bigger because it was all-caps. Spec’s style this semester (and off-and-on in the recent past) has been to run an all-caps headline for the lead article every day. And I am definitely not one who likes to mess with established Spec style, but I would argue that it might be worth considering not running the lead headline all-caps if it is the only article that runs above the fold. (I would also argue that even on regular lead articles that style sometimes makes the news seem bigger than it is.)

A good headline should tell the reader how important an article is and also what is in the article. One of my gripes with The Eye, is that often the headlines on the cover of The Eye do not do a good job telling what the cover article is about, and the cover art (though generally beautiful) only sometimes helps. And without that information, readers are unlikely to open the magazine. (“Generation Why” could be a headline for an article about any number of things.) One good option there might be to run subheadlines off the cover that give a little bit more information about what you’ll get if you open it.

Sports sometimes has a similar problem in that you can’t always tell what sport an article is about. Without a picture or a headline or an indication in the lede, an interested but not overly knowledgeable reader will be lost. I’ve been impressed that sports has been getting better about this. I know the idea of running tags on all sports articles to identify the sport has been bandied back and forth, but barring that, readers must know by the time they get to the lede what sport the article is about. The sports articles have been Web-saved recently with tags identifying the sports, which is definitely a good step, especially because on the Web site you can’t see the pictures the articles are attached to in the print edition to identify the sport.

There is no rubric to tell us exactly how important a piece of news is and how important the headline should be, nor is there a fortune-teller to let us know how a specific piece of news compares to the coming events. But part of a newspaper’s job is to figure all that out and then make decisions that best represent the news and most encourage readers to, well, read.

The Ombudswoman #1

While I have received compliments from many of you about the column (Thanks, guys!) the one constant refrain that I have heard is that you want it to be more than just Editor Josh--you'd like to hear what Editor Erin, Editor John, and Editor Oriana among others have to say.

I don't have news for you on any of those fronts, but I can offer you this. As her senior editor project, head copy editor of the 130th Managing Board Elisheva Weiss has begun doing an Ombudswoman column. I have asked her if she would be okay with my reprinting it here and she has assented. So, without further ado, the first of what I hope will be many weeklyish installments of The Ombudswoman:

“The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair.”

I attended last week’s first-ever Spectator Town Hall and found the concerns raised there both interesting and troubling. One of the concerns that came up was the issue of accuracy at Spectator. Many people there felt like Spec just doesn’t get things right—from facts to quotes. Needless to say, this is a big problem for a newspaper. If people don’t talk to us because they think we’ll misquote them or don’t read us because they think we’re wrong, well, we’re in trouble.

As head copy editor last year, I was in charge of corrections, and I can tell you we ran a lot of them. So many that I had to get taller members of the staff to hang them up on the wall of shame because by the end I could not reach (which might also have something to do with my height, but…). So, first, why do we run so many corrections? Mostly as a result of sloppiness by any number of people from reporter to editor to copy staffer. One of the most frustrating things I found at the town hall was that people assumed Spec is inaccurate on purpose. I don’t think that’s true. I think we make mistakes because we’re working under the pressures of a daily deadline and we’re not nearly as careful as we should be across the board.

I don’t think the mistakes are malicious, but that’s not an excuse for them happening. Some thought on ways to reduce the inaccuracies in the paper:

Cq. Everything. One of the problems that is encountered at a daily newspaper is the issue of checking facts. After the Stephen Glass fiasco at the New Republic, a Slate article contained this: “[T]he joke is not on the New Republic. It’s on the conceit of fact checking in general. No publication is safe from a trusted reporter who makes things up. And hindsight is easy.” That rings true to me. Fact checking, by definition, is faulty. Especially at a daily. But the point of fact checking is that it should catch sloppiness.

Of course, the first step is that reporters should not be sloppy. No one should depend on the copydesk to catch mistakes. I would propose a system in which reporters would be required to send in their articles with a “cq” next to every name indicating that the name has been checked in a reliable source (i.e., the Columbia directory, Facebook, LionLink, the Spec style guide, NOT Wikipedia). Writers should also indicate at the top of the article where the info within is from (i.e., interviews with so-and-so). The point being that reporters should consciously think about where their information is from and if it is correct.

None of this limits the responsibility of the copy desk to check names and look out for unbelievable quotes (like superlatives—always be wary of the most, the only, the first), but it just means that there’s that extra chance that things will be accurate. And the copydesk should never have to find a misspelled name. Ever.


I understand that this system might take time to implement logistically but encouraging everyone to take more responsibility will necessarily make the papers more accurate.

Invest in voice recorders. A quick perusal of the Internet showed that there are at least some digital voice recorders available for about $40 each. If Spec bought a number of them and lent them out, like photo does with camera equipment, then there could be a requirement to record all interviews and save the recordings for a week after the article is published. This will make interviewees feel more secure and will provide an easy way to determine whether someone has actually been misquoted. Until that happens, there are many people on staff who have recorders and are willing to lend them out, so feel free to ask your editor if you would like the use of one.

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Communication. Often facts get screwed up because people make assumptions when they don’t understand something instead of turning around and asking the relevant person. And you know what happens when you assume… The office is not that big. Talk to people. Ask the right questions. Get things right.

Keep a corrections log. Every time we ran a correction last year, there was more than one version of where the mistake happened. This could be solved with a sort of corrections log. I know this has been suggested and is being instituted in some form in the news section. But I envision a form that has to be filled out any time a correction is published in any section. There should be room for input from the reporter, the section editor, and the head copy editor, trying to pinpoint where the failure happened. These forms would then be kept in a file. That file could be evaluated on, say, a monthly basis and then appropriate steps could be taken.

On cleaning up quotes. I could write an entire column on the use of quotes (hmm, maybe I will…), but just a few quick thoughts: the way you choose to use quotes and the context you include can make a big difference in the way someone is understood. Don’t write that people think, write what they said. Don’t write that people represent a greater group if they were talking for themselves. (For instance, just because I say something doesn’t mean that is the position of Spec.) In short, be careful.

The Spec Style Guide. [Gratuitous plug.] The most comprehensive version is currently lost somewhere in cyberspace with the rest of Piana, but check out a version of the style guide on the Spec wiki—Besides for style concerns, there are a lot of facts there that can be helpful, especially about administrators’ titles and random historical Columbia trivia. Take a look.