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I think I offended some people yesterday and I don't think that was necessary so I'm sorry if anyone's feelings were hurt. I should have clarified that most people who write for us are newbies. If someone's been making a living as a freelancer, OF COURSE their work is good
I get a lot of pitches and most of the people I commission are newbies (in many cases we're their first freelance commission). If the pitch is great, I'll always give them a try. If the pitch is okay but they've got three years at the Telegraph, I know it will be readable
If the pitch is okay and they're fresh out of a history degree, I probably won't commission because I've done it quite a few times before and they're never ready. I think there's an element of dunning kruger - journalism looks easy but the more you learn, the more complex it is
It's a buyers market in journalism at the moment. It's sad to say (especially as a former freelancer) but I can get some excellent work for not very much much money at the moment. There's no business incentive to take a risk on someone who may not have been taught the basics
I often commission new people because I believe in giving people a chance. Sometimes they just need a break and a chance to learn from their mistakes. I think a lot about how my life might have gone if I hadn't been lucky to get my first journalism job
Anyway, the actual point of this thread was that I think it's only fair for me to try to spell out some of the most common errors I see from people who don't have staff experience...
Some of them are just small things that don't take long to fix. The number one - "whilst". I don't know why but the journalism word is "while". (First day at Farmers Weekly, my editor Suzie knocked that out of me)
Similarly, "that". You just don't need to use so many "that"s
Learn how to punctuate speech - there are different rules for standard quotes and embedded quotes. Also, why so many semi-colons? Almost always better to use an m-dash (which isn't the same as a hyphen, even if I just did that in this tweet)
Why are you talking about yourself in a feature that's about someone else? I've lost count of the amount of "I spoke to"s I've had to change
Paragraphs should be a couple of sentences at most. Not six sentences. And please don't put about eight clauses in your sentence. Keep it as simple as possible
Get permission to use the pictures you send me (!) and get a picture of the subject of the feature
Intros: please put some thought into it. The first par shouldn't be any kind of definition - "XX is one of the biggest problems facing the UK". Your second or third par is probably the real intro
(par means paragraph!)
Quotes should add something and if you're interviewing some kind of case study, they need to say how they FELT about the thing, not just what happened
Don't use long words or words people might not know. Don't try to sound intelligent, or literary, or poetic. Flair is good (especially in a first-person piece), but simplicity comes first
Link to your sources. If you read any journalism at all, it should be intuitive where to put them. Don't use academic references or put them at the bottom
Check the spelling of names! I know it feels like you typed it correctly but, when you've finished the piece, copy and paste it into Google to make sure. (You would not believe how often people spell names incorrectly)
Don't copy and paste sentences from other publications! I don't know whether everyone would consider this plagiarism but I do. I always check and have caught three or four people in the last year or so
Anyway, that's all I can think of off the top of my head but I'll add to this thread if I think of any more
Just thought of another one! If the editor replies with "we've done that piece but how about doing this similar piece", the answer is YES. In a staff job, you write what needs to be written 90% of the time and maybe 10% you're writing what you want to write
Also, single quote marks are for quotes within quotes and nothing else. It's double or nothing (at least for our style and most others)
If you want to suggest a headline, great. But it should be sentence case for a UK publication. This Kind Of Thing Is Hard To Read In My Opinion
This has also reminded me - "lady" is a title. The word you're looking for is "woman". Only use "lady" where you would use "gentleman", which is to say never
