Editing 101: A step-by-step approach + case study

Happy New Year (a little late, but still worth celebrating)! As January comes to a close, many student publications are gearing up for a busy semester of reporting, writing, and—most importantly—editing. Student editors play a crucial role in shaping the final product, guiding writers through revisions, and maintaining high journalistic standards.

In this post, I’ll break down my step-by-step editing process of a Best-of-SNO winning article on how short form media has affected K-pop to help you edit more efficiently, give stronger feedback, and support your newsroom’s workflow.

Round 1: First read-through

The most important step is to first assess whether the article is ready for editing. Do this by skimming through the article without making any edits or comments.

In particular, look for:

• Does the writer have a completed draft with beginning, middle, and end?

• Does the writer have a headline and subheadline?

• Has the writer requested illustrations?

If the writer lacks any of these things, leave them a comment and ask them to come back to you when they get these components down. Many newbie editors feel the urge to do it for them, but that harms the writer in the long-run and takes up time you could spend looking at articles that are closer to the finish line.

Once the article is ready to edit, read it over again and place it into one of these three categories:

• Needs extensive work: You or another editor will work directly with the writer. This is common for first-time writers.

• Needs moderate work: You will leave comments and they will make the according changes before you meet with them or pass it on to a higher-ranking editor.

• Needs minor work: You will make minor suggestions and/or direct edits and pass it on to a higher ranking editor. This is common for veteran writers.

Round 2: Content Editing

In the second round of editing, look for any missing angles the writer does not address. Depending on the topic, you may need to do some basic research yourself. For example, when editing movie reviews of films I haven't watched, I watch a summary/ review video to make myself familiar with the storyline.

Missing angles can be a good extra touch the writer doesn't address, or it can be missing gaps that leave the reader confused. Although you don't need to go out of your way to help them brainstorm all of their content, it helps to give them pointers in the right direction.

When leaving comments on content or any other aspect of the article, make sure to be specific. For example, don't just say "This part is confusing," tell them what they're missing. Also remember to leave them compliments.

In this paragraph, the writer was missing examples from one of their claims.

In this paragraph, the writer was making some logical jumps between "taking more time" and "hook-based K-pop discography" and the correlation between melody-focused songs and development time. I also suggested a new idea of how the K-pop's international prevalence has led to more repetitive choruses that are easier to sing along to.

If you see any practices that are acceptable in English class writing that are not in your newsroom, make sure to point these things out so the writer doesn't make the same mistake again. In this case it was directly quoting from the internet. At the Jets Flyover, we only let writers directly quote interviews they conducted.

In this comment, I suggested a different effect of the phenomenon the writer introduces in their article.

Round 3: Structure Editing

In the third read-through, take a closer look at each paragraph. Make sure all of the paragraphs are in logical order with smooth transitions, and also check for improvements to the lede. This article didn't have any issues with paragraph placement, so I left comments on lede-writing and transitions.

Round 4: Style Editing

The fourth round of editing is divided into two stages. For the first part, put all weak vocabulary (be-verb, -ing, helper verbs) in bold. Also use wordcounter.net, highlight overused words, and use AI to generate viable synonyms for the word. Then, ask the writer to swap out at least of the half of the bolded words, and fix the rest of the comments.

After using wordcounter.net, I found out the writer used "song" many times. I highlighted all instances Where the writer used "song" more than twice in the same paragraph. I also used ChatGPT to find synonyms for "songs."

In the second half of Round 4, you and the writer are now putting the finishing touches on the article. In this stage, work with them and fix any other errors in phraseology. A tip is to look for commonly used lingo in the industry on ChatGPT.

View the finished product HERE.