News Editing Process

Editing literally means to prepare any text, image, audio or video for publication or presentation by making necessary corrections, alterations and modifications. The process is similar while editing news articles also. The aim of news editing is to present a reader an accurate, balanced and fair account of the event, incident or happening in an easily digestible format.

The process of editing starts with the selection of events a newspaper decides to report. There are many incidents of varying significances happening at time and all those events may not become news because of time and space constraints. And also every newspaper organisation has a set of guidelines which govern the process of selection and presentation.

It is the duty of a reporter to write an account of the selected event which is then sent to the editing desk. It is at the editing desk where a sub-editor shapes a story and makes it easily comprehendible to the readers.

A sub-editor structures the story in such a way that all the relevant information is disclosed at the beginning of the story. He aligns the story to the style followed by the newspaper and also double-checks facts, figures and names. He makes a report clean, clear and consistent and writes strong and attractive headlines. He also responsible for the basic page lay-out.