Editing Issues

By Roger469 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

During my placement, I encountered a number of issues that I needed to address. This blog post explains what these issues were and how I overcame them.

Firstly, at the beginning of my placement, I felt very out of my comfort zone. The main reason for this was because I was in a more senior role than I have been used to whilst at university and due to me still being a student, it was unusual to go into an editor role. Having said that, the students appeared to respond well to me and appeared to appreciate why I was there.

As the students were preparing for a news day, I had to ensure that their work was suitable for broadcast. This meant ensuring that the written articles were written in a way that did not breach the various libel and defamation laws as well as making sure they looked visually appealing on the blog itself, i.e. having the featured images and other pictures accredited and putting in by-lines. The issues with featured images and by-lines were the two most common issues that I had; some articles did not have the proper accreditation and many did not have a by-line. As this appeared to be a recurring issue, I spoke to all of the students as a group to highlight why these were important for online news texts. Again, the students appeared to appreciate my comments and this issue was largely reduced.

Being an editor also meant that I had to improve pieces. I did this in two ways; firstly, I read through the articles that were saved in draft form and made any necessary changes. These changes were mostly restructuring sentences and correcting grammar, although I did have to put in the by-lines and featured images myself. The second way that I improved the texts was a more effective method; I sat down with the individual students and discussed the improvements I made and why I made them. I was always keen to point out what the students did well first of all but then explained what they needed to do for next time. As I had been in their situation with the news day preparation last year, I could sympathise with the students and offer them guidance where needed.

I also needed to talk to some of the students about the software that they needed to use to create their packages. As they were preparing for a television news day, the students needed to use PremierPro and Adobe Audition, both of which I have used often during my time at university. Again, as some of the students were not comfortable using the software, I sat down with some of them and gave them a brief explanation about what the software does. I also created some help sheets that both the students and the lecturers could use for future years, as well as forming a style guide that the first years could work from.

By and large, I felt that I dealt with the issues that arose during my placement very capably. Even my mentor stated that the students looked up to me as a role model and greatly appreciated the knowledge that I could bring to them.