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Reporter and Sub-Editor
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A newspaper which has sub editors and reporters, who maintain good
relationship with each other, becomes a better newspaper. But it is
difficult, as sub editors think reporters know nothing, while reporters
think sub editors know nothing; and it is common everywhere in journalism.
There is a direct relationship between reporters and sub editors in
the sense that a reporter writes a news story and the sub editor edits the
story to make it more concise and readable, and places it in the news
pages according to priority. |
This is the
place where there are a lot of possibilities for the misunderstanding and
intolerance to grow on one another. It may happen that a reporter may not
grasp the news in the story he has written and it leads the sub editor to
rewrite the story. Some times reporter may, in hurry, leave some important
inputs or may write the wrong ones. This often happens, as reporters are
usually in hurry because of the work load and it is the daily task of the
sub editors to correct those factual and other errors and make the stories
free of mistakes.
But there are reporters who write carelessly dumping the information,
which later is a burden for sub editors. Even sub editors are busy, as
they need to edit many news stories each day. Such negligence by reporters
makes sub editors intolerable.
Sub editors have a greater task to do. They need to find the real news and
provide the news in the readable for and make it interesting. It happens
on everyday basis that sub editors contact reporters, who have written
small news out of a prominent issue, and get inputs and themselves make
the story according to its importance as news. They even run behind a
brief news and make special stories themselves.
But as they read the news stories written by the reporters and
correspondents and scrutinize them, they can easily understand the
mentality of reporters. They understand reporter’s news sense, his
interests and his writing capabilities. And they have a good team of
colleagues to discuss reporters.
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Reporters, on the other hand, think that their story was cut mercilessly,
by the sub editors. They think that the flow in which they have written
the news was lost and the story intro and the body were changed. They
think that the innovative heading they had given was replaced with an
ordinary one. This actually happens sometimes, as like bad reporters,
there too are bad sub editors. Whenever a news story of a good reporter is
edited by bad sub editor, the story looses its structure and content. And
both bad reporter and bad sub editor are ruled by their own egos. The
clash of their ego ultimately affects the content of the newspaper.
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The ego also keeps the journalists like stagnant water, as they consider
all other journalists are hopeless, and he himself knows all. The ego
itself kills curiosity, the most essential quality in a journalist, and
ultimately newspaper is the looser.
Admitting one’s mistakes, making efforts on everyday basis to improve
one’s knowledge and writing and editing skills are the only solutions to
kill any journalist’s reasonless ego; and that will make one and essential
journalist, and help newspaper grows.
Contributing Author:
Raghavendra is a Journalist. Email:
woodlanders2@yahoo.com
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