Editorial Processes 1
Heinz Wittenbrink
2024-10-16
Content strategy and editorial quality
Preface
Github repository
Goals and plan of the course
- Know what editing, editorial processes and an editorial team is
- Be able to do consulting for an organisation about the forming and management of an editorial team
- Know important factors and influences for the future development of editorial teams
- Handle editorial roles and processes in your master thesis
Base for grading
- Please write (individually) short minutes after every session.
- Please write a short summary of what you have learned at the end of the course and include a reflection about the relevance of editorial quality for your actual or future professional practice.
Goals today
Understanding the basics of the craft of editing
- Content strategy and editorial praxis
- What is editorial quality?
- Editorial quality and search
Second and third aspect
- Reviewing the editorial process of contentstrategy.at
- Filling the editorial roles of contentstrategy.at
- Perspective: Ethical and social aspects of editing
Plan of the course
- Content strategy and editorial quality
- Editorial quality and standards
- Editiorial team structure and power dynamics
- Editing and AI
Timetable for today
9:00 - 9:15: Introduction
9:15 – 10:45 Input: Editing as a root of content strategy
11:00 - 12:45: Group work: What is editorial quality?
12:45 – 14:00: Lunch break
14:00 – 15:15: Group work: Line editing
15:15 – 15:30: Break
15:30 – 17:00: Editing and contentstrategy.at
Context
- Editing of articles for contentstrategy.at
- Documenting a part of this course for contenstrategy.at
- Work done for contentstrategy.at
- Protocol?
Possible Lecture Reports
- What is editorial quality?
- Editing and AI
- Types of editorial organisation
- Editorial roles and workflow
Possible literature reviews
- Kissane, Elements of content strategy
- Plotnik, Elements of editing
- Google on content quality
Web editing as a root of content strategy
Editorial practice in our group
- Edititing in my work
- Editorial tasks
- Editorial roles
Literature
- The elements of content strategy (Kissane 2011 )
- The elements of editing (Plotnik 1982)
- Google search central on editorial quality (“Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content | Google Search Central | Documentation” n.d.)
- Google Quality Rater Guidelines (Google 2024)
Kissane
About Erin Kissane
Plotnik
The Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide… book by Arthur Plotnik (Plotnik 1982)
Plotnik online
Google search central on editorial quality (“Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content | Google Search Central | Documentation” n.d.), Google Quality Rater Guidelines (Google 2024)
Question to the group: Further sources?
Editing as a component of content strategy
As their content specialists, the more we know about solid editorial practices, the better we can help our clients with the transition to the new world of distributed online publishing.
Kissane (2011) p. 21
Editing as a root of content strategy
Editorial work is so closely related to content strategy that questions about the difference between the two often arise. From the outside, content strategy can look quite a lot like the sort of editing found in magazines and newspapers. The editorial world, and that of publishing in general, has a lot to offer us.
Kissane (2011) p.16
The importance of editing
- Editors as delegates of the audience
- Editors as guarantors of quality
- Editors as packagers of information
Roles of the content strategist and the editor in chief
They also need someone to decide how best to communicate it, who should make it, and so on—a sort of combination editor-in-chief and air traffic controller. They need a content strategist.
Kissane (2011) p.1
Content strategists as managing editors
Those who do content strategy work from within organizations tend to fill roles quite similar to those of a traditional managing editor: they plan and oversee the communication of new themes and ideas, manage schedules, and collaborate with writers and other content producers.
Kissane (2011) p.69
Examples
Content strategist at the city of Leoben
Content Strategists: What Do They Do, Anyway? | Intergrowth™
Content strategies have to be translated into editorial decisions
- Dependencies of content strategies and contentent strategists from editors
- Content strategy is about channels, not items
- Content channels can only be managed by editors
Why editorial is important
In my experience, it is very easy for brilliant information architects (or UX people who do information architecture) to underestimate the importance of editorial planning, voice and tone, and detailed guidelines for content creation Kissane (2011) p. 59
Editors cannot be replaced by specialists
If you rely on internal experts without a dedicated editor and approval process, you’re courting trouble. Kissane (2011) p. 66
Editing as necessary skill and craft
But the truth is, none of these tools can replace a skilled in-house editor. If your client will be creating and managing more than a few dozen pages of content, they’ll need an editor or internal content strategist to keep things running smoothly. Kissane (2011) p. 69
Editing is about authority and leadership
Content creation encompasses writing, illustration, information visualization, metadata and text-equivalent production, and interface writing, and is supported by creative direction and old-fashioned editorial leadership. Kissane (2011) p. 62
Editing as continuous handling of complex situations with unexpected components
The essence of editorial work lies not in style guides and arguments about grammar, but in the ability to cultivate relationships, manage chaos, and serve readers. It’s not a profession to be learned from books, but these three very different takes will help. Kissane (2011) p. 78
Real world editing
But real-world editing is much more about crack organizational skills, a habit of developing practical communication ideas, and the ability to deal firmly and diplomatically with the whole crew of people involved in getting a book, newspaper, or website from concept to delivery. Kissane p. 17
Tasks of editors and editorial teams
- maintaining consistency (often with style guides)
- correct language
- passion for getting the story
- development of themes and narrative arcs
- reactions to outside events
- managing writers and creators
- maintaining balanced variety
Editors as advocates of the readers
Editors worth their salt work not for writers or publishers, but for readers. Kissane (2011) p. 17
Paradoxically, it’s only by working tirelessly for our readers that we can genuinely serve our clients and employers Kissane (2011) p. 18
Acting as a user advocate doesn’t make you an impractical idealist. As we’ve learned from our editorial colleagues, if your content doesn’t work for the user, you’ve already failed. User advocacy is simply a way of ensuring that a project achieves business goals. • Kissane (2011) p. 47
Storytelling as a focus for editors
Whatever corner of the publishing world they come from, editors know how to help other people tell the best, most engaging stories they can tell. Content people with backgrounds in journalism or publishing usually have the basics of storytelling down cold, but the rest of us can learn from the storytelling principles of these fields—from the basics like building a lead that hooks the reader (and supporting it with facts and quotations) to sophisticated techniques for layering in secondary narratives. Kissane (2011) p. 18
Discussion: Editing for print and digital
Content and packaging
Some lines of fair play can be drawn, but lightly. A manuscript’s content … is the author’s province … But the form of the final product–its organization, pace. packaging–is what editors like to think is their speciality. (Plotnik 1982)
Editorial Quality
Google: Quality and SEO
Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google Developers (Google Search Central n.d.)
Content criteria
- Information
- Analysis and interpretation
- Balance
- Originality
Readability criteria
- Appeal
- Concreteness and clarity
- Color and tone
Impact criteria
- Enlightenment
- Force
- Relevance
Exercise (groupwise)
- Form groups of 4 people
- Analyse one article of contentstrategy.at using the criteria in Plotnik (1982), pp.28/29 and “Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content | Google Search Central | Documentation” (n.d.)
- Make a list of editorial problems and of suggestions for improvement
- Present the results to the whole group.
Sample articles:
Line editing
Line editing 1
Sentence by sentence, line by line:
- carry the author’s meaning?
- are my revision’s more effective?
- effectiveness of every phrase (grammar)
Line editing 2
- numerical/factual/judgmental error
- typos
- details of footnotes etc.
- quotes, links, attributions
Line editing 3
- step back, whole and part
- sexism, racism, ageism, ethnocentrism,
- structure: title, subtitle, lead
- cleared additions with th author
Exercise 2 (groupwise)
Start with line editing one of the unpublished articles in content strategy at! Present the results to the whole group.
Examples: https://www.contentstrategy.at/admin/entries/lectureReports/63587-aesthetic-usability-effect,https://www.contentstrategy.at/admin/entries/lectureReports/81865-the-importance-of-ethics-in-content-strategy
Summary and questions
- What did we learn for our practice?
- What should we learn for our practice?
- Where do we need a revision of our editorial guidelines?