| Preface | p. xvii |
| Approaching the Story | p. 1 |
| Focus on fundamentals: The editor within | p. 2 |
| Editing is Reading with an Attitude | p. 2 |
| The Editor Emerges | p. 4 |
| The Editor Shifts From Me to We | p. 7 |
| What Editors do and Why It Matters | p. 8 |
| The Editor's Changing Role: From Print to Multimedia | p. 12 |
| The Changing News and News Judgment | p. 18 |
| Preparing to be an Editor | p. 22 |
| Focus on news judgment: The editor's attitude | p. 25 |
| The Editor Steps Forward | p. 25 |
| The Editor's Attitude | p. 26 |
| News Values and News Judgment | p. 30 |
| Applying the News Values | p. 36 |
| News Judgment in Action | p. 37 |
| Doing the Right Thing: Fairness and Ethics | p. 41 |
| The Starting Point: Your Stylebook | p. 51 |
| A Look Around the Newsroom | p. 52 |
| Focus on skills and tools: The editor in the newsroom | p. 56 |
| The News is in the Details | p. 56 |
| Skills for Today's Copy Editor | p. 58 |
| Organization: the Shape of the Story | p. 65 |
| Accuracy: the Substance of the Story | p. 73 |
| Numbers in the News | p. 82 |
| Tools for Today's Editor | p. 90 |
| Focus on grammar: The mechanics of language | p. 100 |
| Why Grammar Matters | p. 100 |
| What are Grammar, Style and Usage? | p. 102 |
| Building Grammar Skills Step By Step | p. 104 |
| Sentences: Putting the Parts Together | p. 130 |
| Punctuation | p. 137 |
| Focus on good writing: Strong and graceful prose | p. 151 |
| Correct Writing and Good Writing | p. 151 |
| Style and Usage: Let the Writer's Voice Be Heard | p. 153 |
| The Editor's Role: Seeing the Details and Hearing the Song | p. 153 |
| Clarity Through Word Usage: Be Simple, Be Brief | p. 156 |
| Misused Words | p. 164 |
| More on Quotations and Attributions | p. 176 |
| Building Graceful Sentences | p. 185 |
| Inside the Story | p. 199 |
| News close to home: Editing local stories and community news | p. 200 |
| The Importance of Local News | p. 200 |
| What's Different About Local News? | p. 203 |
| The Characteristics of Strong Local News | p. 205 |
| Raising the Standards in Community News | p. 219 |
| The Debate Over Civic Journalism | p. 228 |
| News from afar: Editing wire stories | p. 235 |
| News From Afar | p. 235 |
| Looking Inside the Wire | p. 238 |
| The Wire Editor's Tasks | p. 239 |
| Reading and Selecting Wire Stories | p. 247 |
| Editing and Trimming Wire Stories | p. 250 |
| Making a long story short: Editing for brevity and clarity | p. 267 |
| Cutting Stories Without Cutting Corners | p. 267 |
| Old Tools for New Needs | p. 269 |
| Thinking Through the Story | p. 272 |
| Editing Briefs: The Shortest of the Short | p. 294 |
| After the fact: Editing features and more complex story forms | p. 305 |
| Feature Editing is Creative Editing | p. 305 |
| Features, News and News Features: Some Distinctions | p. 307 |
| The Feature Editor and the Feature Writer | p. 308 |
| Changing Priorities: News Values and More | p. 311 |
| Leads and Language in Features | p. 315 |
| Focus and Organization in Features | p. 328 |
| No safety in numbers: Poll and survey stories | p. 339 |
| Polls Can REflect or Distort Public Opinion | p. 339 |
| A Primer on Polling | p. 340 |
| Key Concepts in Poll Results | p. 343 |
| Bias in the Questioning Process | p. 346 |
| Scientific and Nonscientific Polls | p. 356 |
| The Impact of Polls on the Public | p. 361 |
| Doing justice: Legal issues, ethics and bias | p. 367 |
| The Lessons of 1998 | p. 367 |
| Developing A Sense of What is Right | p. 370 |
| The Concept of Libel | p. 376 |
| The Right to Privacy | p. 386 |
| Ethical Guidelines | p. 389 |
| Beyond the Story | p. 403 |
| Headlines: Precision, power and poetry | p. 404 |
| The Voice of Authority | p. 404 |
| What Headlines Do | p. 405 |
| Getting Started: Headline Basics | p. 406 |
| The Language of Headlines | p. 410 |
| Four Stages of Headline Writing | p. 412 |
| Intention: What Good Headlines Must Do | p. 413 |
| Approach: What Good Headlines Should Do | p. 421 |
| Mechanics: Compressing Meaning, Maintaining Clarity | p. 424 |
| Structure: Headlines on the Page and Screen | p. 435 |
| An eye for news: Editing photos | p. 447 |
| The Power of Pictures | p. 447 |
| Image and Reality | p. 451 |
| Selecting Photos | p. 452 |
| Ethical and Legal Issues | p. 458 |
| Cropping and Sizing Photos | p. 468 |
| Writing Cutlines | p. 475 |
| Showing the story: Editing information graphics | p. 481 |
| The Value of Showing the Story | p. 481 |
| Types of Information Graphics | p. 483 |
| Data and Distortion | p. 494 |
| Editing Text in Infographics | p. 504 |
| The balancing act: Designing pages | p. 509 |
| Communicating Through Design | p. 509 |
| Why Design Matters | p. 510 |
| Design Concepts | p. 516 |
| Story Design with and Without Art | p. 522 |
| From the Module to the Page | p. 530 |
| Typography: the Visual Dimension of Words | p. 535 |
| Advanced Issues in Design | p. 539 |
| Laying Out Inside Pages | p. 546 |
| Color Considerations | p. 548 |
| From gatekeeper to guide: Online news and 21st-century editing | p. 556 |
| The Leap from the Page to the Screen | p. 556 |
| Audience, Advertising and Ethics: New Realities Online | p. 561 |
| The News and the Newsroom Go Online | p. 567 |
| Adapting Your Skills to Online Editing | p. 577 |
| The Web, Free Speech and Democracy | p. 585 |
| Frequently Misused Words | p. 593 |
| Glossary | p. 597 |
| Sample Dummy Sheets | p. 607 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 611 |
| Index | p. 613 |
| Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved. |