Editors,
Here's the captions assignment. Good luck. See you at the Missoula Art Museum Thursday morning. Bring a notebook.
-Dennis

Captions Assignment

Welcome Grad Students

We'll gather here occasionally to discuss the verities and vagaries of news editing. I hope you'll find the links on the right helpful, too.

We'll start the semester with a missive from master editor Robert C. McGiffert, an emeritus professor of journalism and one of my mentors, who passed along two things that set him off as he scanned this week's news.

First was a reference to John Roberts as "chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court." Actually, McGiffert says, the correct title is "chief justice of the United States." The former description, he adds, is "(s)ort of like calling W 'president of the U.S. government.' "

An erroneous reference to the "Congressional Medal of Honor" also stuck in McGiffert's craw. The correct description is Medal of Honor, and those who wear it are recipients, not winners.

How do we know? The Stylebook tells me so.

Let's Review

The final exam is scheduled for 10 - noon on Thursday, Dec. 14. It will be much the same as the midterm, with sections on usage, style and current events. You'll also have to write a headline and edit a short story that may be accompanied by a photo or graphic.

Let's use Thursday's final class to review. To help me prepare, please post a question about a language problem or editing concept that you'd like me to cover in class.

Paraphrase to the Rescue

Your classmate Alex Sakariassen did some research on news organizations' policies on correcting minor grammatical errors in quotations. Here's what he found:

Although no journalist I questioned believed changing quotations should be a regular practice at any publication, some danced closer to the line than others. From the highest echelon of United States journalism down to the local daily, the answer to the above question seems to be “it depends.”

“We don’t clean up grammar in quotes, but if it’ll make someone look stupid we’ll paraphrase it,” said Don Podesta, assistant managing editor of the Washington Post copy desk.

According to Podesta, the Post has developed a clear-cut policy on the issue. He said copy editors will clean up language to avoid making sources look uneducated or foolish, but that any changes to the quote’s content is forbidden.

One of the few times the Post will include incorrect grammar is to emphasize a regional dialect pivotal in a story. Sometimes, Podesta added, a story will involve a particularly sensitive source such as a foreigner or someone for whom English is not a first language. Even then, it's a rare practice.

“We try not to quote dialect or accents,” he said.

Bill Fink, a spokesman for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said his paper’s policy’s is similar to Washington Post’s. Unless a grammatical error is particularly important to the story, the Post-Intelligencer will avoid using the quotation by paraphrasing. If dealing with a prominent political or official source, the Post-Intelligencer will hold the source accountable for his or her word choice and not shy away from using quotes that make the source look foolish or uneducated.

But under no circumstances will editors or reporters change a grammatical error in a quotation, Fink said.

In small cities where “everyone knows everyone,” some publications appear to inhabit the No Man’s Land of the issue.

“We don’t have a one-size-fits-all policy on that,” said Missoulian editor Sherry Devlin. “If it’s some minor grammatical error, sometimes I change that.”

Devlin explained that while the Missoulian strives to be accurate in its news coverage, the newspaper does not wish to promote incorrect use of grammar by printing minor errors in stories. “It doesn’t come up that often,” she said.

Some newspapers have broken away from this gray area, however, providing an answer to the question.

“If it’s in quotation marks, it’s what was said,” said Dave Bundy, editor of the Bismarck Tribune.

Bundy said that cleaning up minor errors in quotes used to be a common practice, but that practice is fading out. Now the Tribune solves the problem by using indirect quotations or paraphrases, which Bundy said don’t seem to affect the stories’ reception.

“Readers don’t care if there are quotations or not,” Bundy said. “That’s something we get hung up on.”

He also said that editors like Devlin aren’t necessarily in the wrong, as they aren’t intentionally trying to change the news but rather enhance its presentation.

Even the Associated Press straddles the issue a bit. The first sentence of the quotations entry in the 2006 edition of the AP Stylebook says, “Never alter quotations even to correct minor grammatical errors or word usage.”

However, in the third paragraph of the entry the stylebook says not to “routinely use abnormal spellings such as gonna in attempts to convey regional dialects or mispronunciations.” (Again, paraphrasing fixes that problem.)

Does this mean journalists who use incorrect grammar in quotes to convey a source’s regional speech patterns are in the wrong? Whose code of journalistic ethics do we follow, and why is it the “right” one?

In the end, we journalists must decide how to present the news in a fair and accurate manner without threatening our integrity or deceiving readers.

Captions, Geographic Style

Student Marybeth Valentine wanted to know how National Geographic handles captions, so she asked former photojouralism prof Teresa Tamura, who spent a recent summer working for the magazine.

"Teresa said the magazine has a whole staff of people who are just caption writers," Marybeth said, adding that the writers often travel to the country or to the site of the photograph to get information they need. "They do not travel with the photographers."

Once the photos are selected, the caption writers do extensive research on the subjects.

"The captions contain a lot of information about not only the subject but also some history of the place or person or thing that is in in the picture," Marybeth reported. "Many of the captions also contain quotes from the subjects."

Here's an example of a National Geographic caption. It goes with the photo above:

Strolling solo
A linear lid atop an abandoned 19th-century railroad viaduct, the Promenade Plantée runs almost three miles (five kilometers) through urban neighborhoods in eastern Paris from Place de la Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes. From dawn to dusk, its lush gardens offer walkers a long ribbon of green relief from noise and traffic. Sheltered in the viaduct's arches are artisans' workshops and galleries open at street level.

Cutlines, Seattle Style

Devin Wagner checked in with the Seattle Times to see how they handled captions. Here's his report:

Fred Nelson, a photo editor at the Seattle Times, said that the newspaper doesn’t have a set style for the cutlines. He said that they require the basics. Cutlines must be accurate and written in complete sentences -- and they must be in English. The names in the photos must be correct and identify the people from left to right. The date and day are required, but don’t always go on to the print stage. Those things are needed for the archives. The final thing is to make sure you don't state only the obvious. The cutline needs to explain why the shot is important.

Here's a sample to go with the Times photo above:

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, right, plays with the controls on his Zune, Microsoft's new portable music device, while the band "The Secret Machines" prepares to resume playing during the unveiling event at Westlake Center.

Words for Pictures

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but few news photos can stand alone without some explanation and context.

Here are tips for writing captions or cutlines, as journalists call them:

• Never write a cutline with out seeing the photo.
• Use the present tense.
• Avoid trite and obvious phrases such as looks on as, is shown here or pictured above.
• Check the spelling of every name and identify everyone recognizable in the photo, even it’s only by function. Norman Bates enters court with his mother and two sheriff’s deputies.
• Try to avoid describing people by saying left or right. It’s better to describe them by what they’re doing in the photo. Jolene West and her sister Arlene, waving the flag, leave the dock for their cruise around the world.
• Don’t insult your readers’ intelligence: President Bush, left, shakes hands with …
• Don’t assume you know what people in the photo are thinking or feeling based on his or her expression. Jessica Tate, 3, cowers in fear behind her mother as Forth of July fireworks burst overhead. Maybe she was just tired.
• Avoid obvious characterizations. The beautiful sunset … the tragic accident … the grisly murder. Such things should be evident in the photo.
• Explain anything that isn’t evident, especially the outcome of events pictured (The rodeo clown shown being gored by the bull was actually uninjured.)
• Explain any special effects the photographer used to distort reality. Identify photo illustrations as such.
• Don’t try to pass off a file photo as a current one. Explain its age and origin.
• Make sure the people in the cutline are the people in the photo. (Photos are often cropped from the image you may have seen on the contact sheet or thumbnail.)
• Short cutlines work best, particularly if they accompany a story.
• Wild Art” or stand-alone cutlines need to function like brief stories. Remember the Five Ws. Such photos often require mini-headlines or taglines.
• If several cutlines accompany a story, each should provide different information.
• Be writers: Jason Varitek makes the tag, the umpire makes the call and the Red Sox win the World Series.