How to Be an Editor Spring 2020

Jennifer Kahn jmkwork@gmail.com (510) 861-6654 Class time: Thursdays 3-6pm. Location: Greenhouse (room 209), North Gate Hall Office hours: Thursdays 6-7pm, or by appointment

This course is designed to be a tasting platter for the aspiring print or online editor, or anyone curious about the job. It’s also a great course for writers who want to learn how editors think, and use those skills to make their own work better. Almost anyone can read a piece and tell that it isn’t working. But identifying precisely why it isn’t working and how to fix it is magic. (Unlike most writing jobs, editorial jobs also come with salaries and benefits. So there’s that.)

One goal of this class will be to connect you with actual working editors at great publications. Over the semester, we’ll host or hear from editors at the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, California Sunday, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, and more. We’ll also be doing the occasional field trip, beginning with one to Wired Magazine.

Beyond building a network of career connections, these visits are designed to prepare you for a job in the editing world through real-world practice. Editors applying for a job at a publication are typically asked to take an editing test. Through our guests, we’ll get actual samples of these, and work through them – then have the results critiqued by a real editor in charge of hiring. We’ll back these exercises with lectures on everything from fine- grain skills (refining sentences for clarity, power, and concision) up through more advanced techniques: identifying reporting holes, understanding a story’s driver, basic structures (the “W”, the “G”), and strategies for sustaining narrative momentum.

Along the way, we’ll discuss the challenges of working well with writers, from recognizing strengths and weaknesses (sentence-smart vs. story-smart etc) to psychodrama management. We’ll also be discussing questions like:

• As an editor, how do you evaluate a pitch? • When approaching a first draft, what do you do? • How can you distinguish whether a story's main problem is poor reporting, poor writing, poor pacing, or poor organization? • How do you set a story’s mood and tone?

Expectations

The classwork for this course will focus on weekly editing assignments. Drafts will be emailed to you the week they’re assigned, and you’ll be expected to bring in either a digital or print copy of the original draft, along with a separate copy that includes your edits, for each assignment. Each person will also be partnering with a writer in a long- form class (Ed Dobb’s Intro to Narrative), to edit their first draft in real time. As always, no absences without prior agreement, except in emergency. Grades will be 40% class participation, 60% class assignments. Because final drafts of several stories we’re editing will be available online, your editing will be graded NOT on how closely your edit mimics the actual final draft, but on the thoughtfulness, insight, and effort put into your edits – along with the depth, elegance, and economy of your final product.

Class One — Why You’re Here January 23, 2020 -Due: Readings: “Politics and the English Language”; three news stories -Introductions, overview of the class. -Discussion: To make a story better, you first need to diagnose what’s wrong. That’s trickier than it seems. Maybe a story seems confusing, or boring. Is the premise faulty? Is it a reporting or structural problem? Is the writing just bad? This class will begin our trip to literary med school. -Playing doctor: Three cases -Mistakes Writers Make -Interlocutor sign-up

For next week: Edit SF Chronicle drafts

Class Two — Playing Doctor: Sick News Stories, Part One January 30, 2020 -Due: SF Chronicle edits -Guest: Demian Bulwa, Metro Editor, San Francisco Chronicle -Discussion: A good news story is deeply reported, tightly written, and logically structured. Too bad that’s not what you’ll get from most writers (especially in your first editing job at www.newzz.com). This class is a primer on how a professional news editor diagnoses a sick story – and finds the cure. -What an editor needs to watch out for when editing a first draft, part one: ledes and nuts.

For next week: Read and edit “Dumping” draft. Light edit of Buzzfeed draft

Class Three —Playing Doctor: Sick News Stories, Part Two (Features) February 6, 2020 -Due: “Dumping” edit; light edit of Buzzfeed draft -Guest: Mat Honan, Buzzfeed -Discussion: Tackling a more complex news feature. Understanding order, structure, and progression. -Comparing story memos. What kind of editor are you? -Repetition, redundancy, and reiteration

For next week: Physician Heal Thyself; Read: feature pitch packet

Class Four – Shaping the Story (from the start) February 13, 2020 -Due: Physician Heal Thyself; Read: feature pitch packet -Guest: James Kerstetter, New York Times -Discussion: Vetting pitches: scenes and stakes, why we care. Writers will sometimes pitch a story as a profile (or as a quest, investigation, etc) when it isn’t. One job of the editor is to recognize which approach will bring out a story’s strengths.

For next week: Pitch edits for Pollan’s class; read The Verge before-and-after drafts

Class Five – Digital Journalism: Quality vs. Speed February 20, 2020 -Due: Pitch edits for Pollan’s class; Read: The Verge before-and-after drafts -Guest: Elizabeth Lopatto, Science Editor for The Verge -Story development: the crucial phase where you, as the editor, are helping to shape and orient the story even before it’s written (and sometimes even before it’s reported). -Discussion: Balancing the demands of quality editing and quick turnaround -Workshopping select Pollan pitch edits -Intro to the front-of-the-book

For next week: Find and be prepared to verbally pitch one FOB idea for Mother Jones (30 seconds max).

Class Six – Intro to Magazine Editing: the Front of the Book Feb 27, 2020 -Due: Pitches for two FOB ideas -Guest: Maddie Oatman, Mother Jones -Editorial meeting for FOB pitches, led by Maddie Oatman -Discussion: Introduction to the editorial hierarchy: what an EIC sees. The many jobs of the editor: Finding stories, developing a stable of writers, vetting pitches. -Exercise: Speed edit

For next week: Read Wired pitch packet as prep for next week’s field trip!

Class Seven – FIELD TRIP TO WIRED MAGAZINE March 5, 2020 -Due: Read Wired pitch packet -Editorial pitch meeting with Executive Editor Maria Streshinsky and senior editor John Gravois, a guide to FOB editing with Jason Kehe, plus conversations with senior web editor Sarah Fallon, and Joanna Pearlstein, head of the magazine’s research and fact- checking departments (who regularly hires J-grads as both fact-checkers and fellows).

For next week: Edit Atlantic draft

Class Eight – “I’m sorry this is such a mess, but….” : Tackling the first draft March 12, 2020 -Due: Edited Atlantic draft; Group B Intro to Narrative draft edits -Guest: Ellen Cushing, editor at The Atlantic -Discussion: This week we begin editing longer articles, which bring with them a unique set of challenges. It’s far trickier to sustain reader interest for thousands of words, and similarly crucial for an editor to be able to recognize which stories have real narrative potential – especially since the writer often can’t see the forest for the trees. We’ll begin this week by talking about structure (the “G” the “W”), chronology, acts, and arcs. -Titles and Deks: The story in Six Words

For next week: Read “Unnatural Selection,” by Jennifer Kahn, New York Times Magazine

Class Nine — The Kindest Cut: Editing for Length and Concision March 19, 2020 -Due: Read “Unnatural Selection,” by Jennifer Kahn, New York Times Magazine -Guest: Anita Badejo, Senior Editor for PopUp live magazine -Discussion: Inside the editing process at NYTM -Knife skills: Cutting a story for length is the most excruciating parts of the editing process for most writers. Done poorly, this can feel like butchery. Done well, it’s more like delicate surgery. In this class we’ll talk about how to wield a scalpel so cleanly that the writer barely notices his or her lost material. Also: Figuring out the right length for a piece.

For April 9: Typically a finalist for a senior editorial position at a national magazine will be asked to prepare a long memo describing what he or she would do with the magazine. The editor in chief wants to see that the candidate really understands what makes the publication tick—i.e., can see the world through its unique lens. Pretend you are applying for a senior position at your magazine. For the magazine of your choice, please prepare a sample table of contents, and accompany it with a memo to the editor-in-chief, critiquing the previous three issues of the magazine (and, implicitly, explaining why you’ve proposed what you have).

***MARCH 26 AND APRIL 2 – NO CLASS: SPRING BREAK***

Class Eleven — Going Long: The Complex Narrative April 9, 2020 -Due: Magazine Memos -Guest: Nina Martin, ProPublica. Before joining ProPublica, Nina worked as features editor for San Francisco magazine – a very different job, in both subject and style. We’ll hear from her about that transition, as well as the unique duties of editing investigative stories. -Discussion of Magazine Memos. -An atlas of writerly melancholia. Writers can be touchy, prickly, needy, emotional, and standoffish. Learning how to work with all these personality types – and how to get each of them to produce their best work – is a core part of an editor’s job.

For next week: Pollan first draft edits; Read: New Yorker editing test

Class Twelve – Thinking Like an Architect: Form and Function April 16, 2020 -Due: Pollan first draft edits; Read: New Yorker editing test -Guest: Deirdre Foley-Mendelsohn, Senior Editor, The New Yorker. Deirdre is responsible for a large number of staff writers, and often has to take a draft from rough to near-final in a single pass, to meet TNY’s intense weekly schedule. This is your chance to ask her how she does it. -Workshopping select Pollan first draft edits -Discussion: Seeing what’s not there: reporting holes, guilt, and the unmediated account -Themes: Why they’re not the plot

For next week: Cal Sunday prep

Class Thirteen — Go West, Young Ma’am April 23, 2020 -Due: Read: Group A Intro to Narrative edits; Cal Sunday draft edit -Guest: Raha Naddaf, Executive Editor of California Sunday -Discussion: Before Raha worked at California Sunday, she was features editor at The Marshall Project, and before that she was a senior editor at New York magazine editing features and special issues, and before that edited features at GQ.

For next week: Edit NYTM draft (memo)

Class Fourteen – Making the Familiar Strange, and the Strange Familiar April 30, 2020 -Due: Edited NYTM draft (memo) -Guest: Sheila Glaser, New York Times Magazine -Discussion: Free chat and anything folks want to discuss in more detail.