Editing in Other Fields

Many students who take journalism classes are preparing for careers in fields other than newspapers, magazines, radio, TV or the Internet. Rather than writing or editing news, many of them will make a living writing press releases or advertising copy, and some will edit books. We’d like to take a brief look here at the role editing plays in these other career choices for journalism majors: public relations, advertising and book publishing.

JOB OPPORTUNITIES IN PUBLIC RELATIONS AND ADVERTISING

Public relations and advertising—unlike newspapers, magazines, newsletters, the Web, radio, television and books—aren’t media but rather adjuncts closely connected to the media. Advertising is the major way American media are financed (except books, movies and music), and PR is one of the major sources of news in the U.S., with about half of news stories originating from a press release.

Both advertising and PR try to influence our attitudes about businesses, groups, people and issues, but there are some distinctions between PR and advertising:

• Advertising has been described as overt persuasion, public relations as covert persuasion.

• Advertising sells products; public relations fosters good will for an organization, person or cause.

• Advertising works mainly through mass media, although it may be through smaller alternative media like fliers; public relations works through news releases, press conferences, publicity events, sponsorships—and sometimes advertisements.

• Mass media charge for advertising space or time, but they often give free publicity.

• Advertising is regulated by the government; PR isn’t.

• The main difference is that advertising messages are controlled by those who put them out, but PR messages aren’t—they’re at the mercy of journalists.

Someone pays to have an advertising message placed in the media to sell you something. Public relations is a message someone wants to get out to the public, and it becomes news if a journalist agrees it’s newsworthy.

As of 2012, 462,300 people worked in advertising in America, and the year before, 199,000 Americans worked in public relations. The latest statistics also show there are 46,120 ad agencies and more than 7,000 PR firms in the U.S., with many more working outside agencies. For example, the media themselves hire people to create their own advertisements. In fact, this is one place new advertising graduates get their first job. And many people who do public relations are employed directly within businesses, nonprofits or government agencies, or work as volunteers to help their church, school or fraternal organization with publicity.

Advertising and public-relations jobs, even starting ones, tend to pay much more than comparable media jobs—typically 20 percent more with an ad agency than doing comparable work in media. Some people who initially go into journalism take their experience and switch to public relations, in part for the higher salary.

Many of the best-paying introductory jobs in writing and editing are in communications departments of corporations—putting out employee newsletters, annual reports, and magazines and brochures for customers. Such a job can be a good high-pay alternative to a traditional media job, as well as a way of breaking into the magazine industry. And if you’re a woman, as the majority of journalism graduates have been for the past 35 years, you may be interested to know that women tend to rise faster in advertising and PR than anywhere else in the media.

Public-relations jobs can be in industry, government agencies or nonprofit associations. These jobs involve a wide variety of activities: spoken, written or broadcast communication; speechwriting; writing and editing publications; preparing financial reports; writing proposals; researching and monitoring issues; fundraising; dealing with the media; publicizing products and programs; promoting a corporate image; or lobbying of government.

The one thing people hiring for public-relations positions insist on is good writing skills. A survey of PR directors reported in Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics said the most important traits they look for when hiring are, in this order:

1. Ability to write.

2. Verbal skills.

3. Professionalism.

4. Maturity.

5. Poise.

6. Appearance.

Bad traits, they said, are the inability to work with others rather than independently, having an inflated opinion of your own writing ability and an inability to compromise.

PUBLIC RELATIONS

Public-relations practitioners and corporate communications specialists are called on almost daily to write and edit news releases. In most cases, a news release is written in the inverted-pyramid format on the assumption that the person who reads it will skim the release quickly to see whether anything in it is of interest.

Typically, the audience for which news releases are intended is working journalists— newspaper city editors and broadcast station news directors. A survey in 2011 found that although journalists were relying more and more all the time on social media to find out about new stories, their No. 1 source was still public-relations firms. See www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Survey_says_PR_firms_still_the_No_1_source_for_jou_8315.aspx. A press release provides basic information about an event, a cause, a company or an institution, a candidate, etc.

It’s understood that the newspaper or broadcast station will not use the release verbatim. If the story is used at all, it likely will become the genesis of the media outlet’s own story. The best releases quickly and succinctly give the media the information they need. The releases also explain where to go for more information.

News releases should be accurate and truthful. Editors who feel misled by inflated or overstated releases soon learn to ignore the next one from the same organization. Like journalists, public-relations specialists should have strong principles of professional ethics.

Releases with the best chance of attracting attention have a local news hook, are short and to the point, are clearly written and follow journalistic conventions of the medium for which they’re aimed. It’s important for the promotional writer to remember that the media are inundated with news releases.

Promotional writers will find that it’s much easier to get attention from editors with whom they have developed a working relationship.

The quality of the publication directly affects the improvement or deterioration of the corporate image. Promotional writers and editors also produce corporate reports, manuals and other material that will be used both inside the company and by external audiences. Audiences often judge institutions by the quality of the written materials they produce.

If you’re going into public relations, the best tip is to write your press releases as much like news stories as possible. Use The AP Stylebook for newspaper press releases and the AP’s broadcast version for releases going to radio or television outlets. The more your press release resembles a news story, the easier it will be for the editor to recognize its potential and the more likely it is your message will get through.

Don’t make the mistake common among amateurs of writing your press release like an ad. If editors run it at all, the first thing they’ll do is take out all the nonobjective, self-serving language. They’ll also refocus the story on what they think is news their audience will find useful or interesting—which may not be the message you were trying to get across. So, in writing a press release, ask yourself the same question the editor would: Where is the news here? By focusing your press release on that angle and following regular journalistic style, you’ll increase your chances of being heard.

Master social-networking media. Increasingly, public-relations professionals, like advertisers and marketers, are going around the middlemen—in this case journalists—and getting out their information through an institutional website and social media. They’re using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to get their messages out under their own control, not through an intermediary such as a journalist acting as a gatekeeper and rewriting them. And social media are free.

PRINT ADVERTISING

The media depend on the professionals who create advertising to bring home the revenue that pays the bills. News departments inevitably are drains on company resources. They cost. Advertising departments, on the other hand, create the revenue to support news operations. They pay.

Like the news headline writer who tries to lure the reader into the story, the ad headline writer lures the reader to the wares of a paying customer. In both cases, the headline is expected to be compelling.

Alastair Crompton, a British advertising expert, writes in The Craft of Copywriting that the relationship between the photograph or illustration in a print ad and the headline is critical to an ad’s success. The two must work together, not compete. He writes:

A great picture deserves a great line to back it up; even the painting of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre needs a small brass plate underneath reading “La Gioconda by Leonardo da Vinci.”

Crompton warns the beginning ad designer not to let a picture simply illustrate the headline. Instead, he urges, make sure the two key parts of the ad do their own half of the work.

Both the advertising illustration and the headline are designed to catch quickly the reader’s attention. That’s because most readers spend no more than a second or two scanning an ad. If it doesn’t sell immediately, it’s unlikely to sell at all. For that reason, the elaborate rules for writing news headlines are abandoned in advertising. Ad headlines often don’t have verbs. Sometimes, they are prepositional phrases. Occasionally, there may be no complete thought at all. Some examples:

Ontario, Canada

We treat you royally.

The sound of fast relief.

Plop, plop, fizz, fizz.

In each case, the ad’s purpose is clear. Most readers will instantly recognize the first as a tourist ad for Ontario and the second as one for Alka Seltzer.

One of the classic advertising headlines of all time was one simple word below a picture of a Volkswagen Beetle:

Lemon.

Readers were instantly drawn to the ad, wondering why Volkswagen would label one of its products with the most derogatory of all comments about cars. In the text block that followed, readers learned why: The car in the photograph, perfect on the outside, had been rejected by a Volkswagen inspector for a tiny blemish on the glove box. The ad highlighted Volkswagen’s commitment to quality. Such eye-catching cleverness is what the advertising creative process is all about.

The lemon headline is a classic example of the curiosity headline, one of the three types used in advertisements. The others are news headlines and benefit headlines. News headlines, as the name implies, do much the same job as those in the news pages: They inform. Benefit headlines help the reader understand why he or she should be interested: Earn money in your spare time. Curiosity headlines, like the one for Volkswagen, can be fun to write but are risky. If the reader isn’t curious, the ad fails.

Getting the reader’s attention with a compelling headline and a quality illustration is merely the beginning of the creative process.

Once the writer has the reader’s attention, it’s time to follow up with material to show the reader why he or she should be interested:

Headline: Everything from A to Sea.

Follow-up: With so much to do at Hilton beach resorts, the only hard part is deciding what to do first. Whether you want to stretch your legs with a game of tennis or just stretch out for a few winks. Come discover the ways to play that suit your style. For information and reservations, call your professional travel agent, Hilton’s Resort Desk at…

After the ad captures the reader’s interest, it builds desire for the product—in this case a resort vacation—and tries to convince the reader to act. Here, the objective is to convince the reader to call Hilton for more information. The four-step process used in the Hilton ad is one known to advertisers as AIDA:

1. Attract ATTENTION.

2. Build INTEREST.

3. Create DESIRE.

4. Compel ACTION.

BROADCAST ADVERTISING

Like online journalists, broadcast advertisers must learn to work with all forms of communication—the written word, graphics, audio and video. All combine to produce one of the most effective forms of communication ever devised: broadcast advertising.

With radio ads, it’s relatively easy to play tricks on listeners with sound effects and simple devices like British accents because radio has only one dimension: sound. But too often, radio ad writers merely repeat trite approaches such as easy humor based on some idiot who doesn’t use the product talking with someone intelligent who does. And radio ad readers and actors too often sound unnatural or phony.

Radio ads have only one dimension: audio. Television ads, on the other hand, become major productions. They are expensive to produce, and they must combine the effective use of audio, video and graphic design. Once produced, the television ad competes with dozens of others for the viewer’s attention and often is sandwiched between them.

Writing and editing a compelling script is merely the beginning of the process of creating a successful television commercial. Creative video and audio production are critical to its success. Finally, editing it all together is a talent much in demand.

JOBS IN BOOK PUBLISHING

In 2011, there were more than 2,600 book publishers in America who had sales of $100,000 or more. In addition, there were an unknown, but probably large, number of publishers with smaller sales, as well as many more individuals publishing their own books digitally.

If you’d like to go into book publishing as a career, English is a good major, but perhaps even better is journalism, partly because most books published are nonfiction. Also, journalism school is one of the best places to learn grammar, usage, tightening, adherence to a stylebook and copy-editing symbols. (Yes, editing and proofreading symbols are still used in book publishing despite the rise of the computer.)

After you graduate, there are two main career paths into the book publishing world. One is to work for a university press or specialty press, such as Gale Publishing in the Detroit area, which caters especially to library reference-department sales. Specialty and university presses are found all over the country, meaning near you wherever you are right now.

A second approach is to attend a publishing institute, the most famous of which is the six-week summer one that used to be at Radcliffe until it moved to Columbia University in 2000. Here are the Web addresses for some:

University of Denver Publishing Institute, Denver Colo.

www.du.edu/publishinginstitute/index.html

Columbia Publishing Course (formerly Radcliffe Publishing Course)

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York

www.journalism.columbia.edu/page/216-columbia-publishing-course/217

Summer Publishing Institute

New York University, New York

www.scps.nyu.edu/areas-of-study/publishing/summer-publishing-institute/

In addition, Emerson College offers a master’s degree in publishing:

Publishing and Writing Master’s

Emerson College, Boston

www.emerson.edu/academics/departments/writing-literature-publishing/graduate-degrees/publishing-writing

To keep up on the book publishing business, read Publishers Weekly and Retail Bookseller. Also, follow the New York Review of Books and The New York Times best-seller lists.

In the interest of full disclosure, we should also mention the bad news in book publishing: Entry-level jobs with major publishers are among the most competitive, and editorial assistants typically make about the same as beginning journalists. Also, the jobs often aren’t very stable. There’s a rapid turnover, similar to broadcasting, with people often switching jobs. Adding to the turnover is the fact that mergers in recent years have tended to consolidate companies, close offices and lay off employees. And digital books and e-readers like the Kindle and Nook are changing the book-publishing world, with some authors bypassing publishers, like some musicians are bypassing recording companies, to produce and distribute their own books, either through their own websites or through Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Also of interest is the fact that most publishers have only small staffs and use lots of freelancers. After the acquisitions editor scouts out and signs authors for book deals, an in-house editor works with the author in shaping the book. But at that point, the copy editing, design, production, proofreading and indexing may all be done by freelancers. On the positive side, this means you may be able to freelance from your home doing these editing tasks—but you’ll probably have to arrange your own benefits and pay your own payroll taxes.

Until recently, book publishers tended to ask authors for computer files of chapters but edited them on hardcopy manuscript pages using standard copy-editing symbols. More and more, however, editing is done online using tracking and comment features of Microsoft Word. Copy editors suggest changes to the authors or ask questions about vague passages, and the authors accept or reject the changes and answer the questions.

After the edited manuscript is formatted, the author is sent proofs to approve. A second set of page proofs goes to a freelance proofreader, and, for most nonfiction titles, a third set goes to a freelance indexer. The final corrections are made, the index is formatted, and the book goes into print—usually about 18 months after the initial book deal was made.

If you go into book publishing, it will be useful to familiarize yourself with stylebooks other than The AP Stylebook so universal in journalism. More common in the book world are The Chicago Manual of Style and Words Into Type, but other stylebooks might be used depending on the field of the book. For example, the editor of a book of literary criticism will probably use Modern Language Association style, while the editor of a psychology book will probably use the style of the American Psychological Association.