Category Archives: Writing and editing

Does your magazine publish fake news?

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Of course not! We would never do that, you say. Possibly not, if fake news is defined as flagrantly false stories that you know are fiction, but that you present as true. But if your magazine is typical, at some time you have printed a story that you assumed was true, but that actually was not.

There was the Internet story about birth defects that women were convinced were the result of fallout from bombing in a nearby country. Difficult to check out; after all, there was no research on the topic. But the women’s story was dramatic and you wanted to use it.

Perhaps it was a feature that a writer gave you at the last minute when you were on a deadline and didn’t have time to check the writer’s information. Or maybe–horrors!–you never check the “facts” that appear in your publication. If you don’t, you are not alone. In today’s fast-paced news cycle editors at most big newspapers no longer check every spelling, statistic, attribution, date, or detail of the articles that pass through their hands.

As a result, in a 2005 assessment of American daily newspapers, more than 60 percent of local news and news feature stories were found to have errors, according to Scott R. Maier, “Accuracy Matters: A Cross-Market Assessment of Newspaper Error and Credibility.”

Then there’s also the little matter of proof reading, another neglected practice, resulting in the “interior designer” introduced as the “inferior designer” and the musician who is said to be “on drugs” rather than “on drums.”

With the proliferation of honest mistakes and dishonest fake news, the media is suffering a crisis of credibility. We’re all busy and our publications are understaffed. But if we want to rescue what shreds of credibility remain, we need to do a better job of checking our facts to be sure they are based on truth and not fiction. Even little mistakes erode trust–the misspelling of a name or the mistaken identification of a person in a photo.

Christian publications in particular should make every effort to be reliable sources of information that is accurate, true, and honest. After all, readers may surmise that if the facts are not accurate, perhaps the message is not true.

For everybody? Or nobody?

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I cringe when I hear the answer “everybody” in response to the question as to a magazine’s audience. Even worse was the response one novice editor gave: “Everybody in the whole world, saved and unsaved.”

Really? How do you produce a magazine that everyone in every country throughout the world will want to read, regardless of their attitude toward the Christian faith?

In fact, a magazine that is for everyone is actually for no one. Why? An editor producing a magazine for a specific audience will use the language best understood by that audience, as well as the examples and metaphors to which they can relate.

She will pick topics about which that audience cares and wants to read. For Christians, those topics may include daily devotions, how to pray more effectively, or how to share their faith with non-Christian relatives and friends. Non-Christians would not appreciate those topics, but might like to read stories that incorporate elements of the Christian faith or demonstrate the power of God in daily life.

Age makes a difference, too. I was asked to review a new children’s magazine produced by budding young theology students in Romania. I was surprised to see text-heavy theological articles sporting words like “incarnation” and “justification.” While I appreciated their enthusiasm and their desire to communicate the pure Gospel to these middle school children, I had to point out that they might want to use language and concepts easily understood by children. Less text and more illustrations would be more appealing to children than column after column of dense copy.

The editor who doesn’t want to go to the trouble to research the audience in order to determine how best to communicate with the reader is writing only for himself and his magazine will not last long.

On the other hand, the editor who really wishes to communicate will want to know his audience intimately and will make sure his writers understand how best to reach the readers. The magazine’s appearance will attract that specific audience with colors, fonts, illustrations, and page layouts designed to draw in the reader and to communicate the magazine’s message. Then a member of that specific audience who picks up the magazine will look it over and say, “This is my magazine, just for me.”

Honoring two who stayed the course

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Do you have staying power? Some 20, 30, or 40 years from now, will people look back at your career in publishing and see a faithful communicator who skillfully and consistently carried out the ministry to which he had been entrusted by God?

Two such faithful communicators were honored recently for their decades of service in Christian publishing.

KennethTaylorPhotoThe Evangelical Christian Publishers Association posthumously honored writer/publisher Ken Taylor, author of The Living Bible and founder of Tyndale House Publishers, when they announced the Kenneth N. Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award at an Industry Awards Celebration May 3. According to ECPA Executive Director Stan Jantz, the award was “established to recognize a Christian publishing leader who exemplifies a lifetime of achievement through initiatives and programs that have spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.”

Les_StobbeTwo weeks later, the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Institute presented a Lifetime Achievement Award to Les Stobbe, whose career in Christian publishing to date has spanned 60 years. Over the years, Stobbe has served as a writer/author/journalist, magazine editor, bookstore buyer and supervisor, book publisher, educator, CEO, trainer, and literary agent. He continues to serve as a writer, literary agent, and workshop leader.

Not everyone is recognized with a lifetime achievement award as they come to the end of their career in Christian publishing. But there is One who does recognize the years of faithful service. And his “Well done, good and faithful servant” is all the recognition we need.

Out of the Classroom and into the World: MTI trainer’s students experience real-world reporting

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Dr. Michael Ray Smith

Dr. Michael Ray Smith is a journalism professor and campus newspaper advisor at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

Dr. Michael Ray Smith’s journalism students are having the time of their lives. Smith, who is a trainer with Magazine Training International (MTI) and a member of MTI’s Board of Directors, is also a journalism professor and campus newspaper advisor at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida.

The student journalists are excited because they are reporting not only on school and student concerns, but on America’s wild national politics, attending press conferences and interviewing supporters. Along the way, they are gaining valuable real-world experience and bylines not only in the school paper, but in a local daily newspaper, as well.

Students have also covered West Palm Beach events and city government, as well as church and ministry issues.

“Our program is deliberately focused on getting student journalists reporting off campus,” Smith said. “It helps students to get a realistic experience of working in news.”

Smith has written for major U.S. newspapers and has led journalism programs in universities across the nation. He taught a writing course for Magazine Training International in Manila in 2009. He has written a number of books, including “The ABC List of Feature Ideas” available on MTI’s website. His most recent book is “7 Days to a Byline That Pays.”

The art of the interview–10 guidelines for a successful interview

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Unless all your magazine and newspaper articles are written in the first person, at some point you will need to interview someone. Can you guarantee that every interview you attempt will be be successful? Probably not. But, there are some guidelines you can follow that will make it far more likely your interview will yield exactly the information you need for a successful article.

1. Be prepared. Define your purpose; know exactly what you hope to gain from the interview. Research the person to be interviewed and the topic. If you don’t prepare well, how will you know what questions to ask in order to elicit the information you need?

2. Prepare your key questions in advance and write them down. You will want to explore new directions and interesting possibilities during the interview, but prepared questions ensure that you will not forget the important things you want to ask.

3. Make an appointment if possible and establish a time limit. Don’t just try to catch your interviewee in a free moment. You will have a better, more relaxed interview if your interviewee has set aside the time to talk with you.

4. Select the right interview location. Be aware that interviews in the interviewee’s office may be interrupted by the telephone and interviews of mothers in their homes may be interrupted by the demands of children. Try to find a private place where you won’t be interrupted.

5. Set the tone of the interview. Break the ice right at the beginning; set a friendly, non-threatening tone and explain what you want to accomplish with your interview.

6. Even if you must ask some tough, sensitive questions during the interview, start with the easy, non-threatening questions to get the interviewee comfortable with the interview and used to talking.

7. Ask the right questions. Don’t assume anything; even ask questions with an “obvious” answer. You may be surprised by a response you could never have predicted. Don’t ask “leading” questions that assume a certain answer and don’t ask a question every time the interviewee pauses for breath. Ask concrete questions to elicit details that will make your article more interesting.

8. Guide the interview. Don’t interrupt a helpful train of thought; write down questions to follow up. But, don’t let the interviewee take off on an unhelpful tangent.

9. Avoid debating with the interviewee. Your interviewee may express opinions with which you don’t agree. Avoid the temptation to turn the interview into either a conversation or a debate. You’re there to get the information you need, not to have a discussion. Set aside your own opinions until the end of the interview and then if you wish to get into it with the interviewee, feel free to wade in.

10. Ask for final thoughts. You may discover important information you hadn’t thought to ask about.

For more information on the Art of the Interview, you may download a free ebook from Magazine Training International.