Editing for Special Pages

Unit – 8
Dr Shiba Daveshar
Introduction
• Editing for supplements, pullouts;
• Editing copies of news agencies, bureaus, regional
correspondents, and stringers;
• Editing feature pages, Sunday magazine, special supplements,
and city pullouts.
• Preparation of charts, diagrams, graphs, illustrations, cartoons;
• Photo graphics, caricature selection
Page-Making: VISUAL HIERARCHY
• Page layout is the art of manipulating the user’s attention on a page to convey meaning, sequence, and
points of interaction.

• The concept of visual hierarchy plays a part in all forms of graphic design.

• The most important content should stand out the most-the least important should stand out the least.

• Titles : a reader should be able to deduce the informational structure of the page from its layout.

• The following example has no visual hierarchy

Layout : White Space
Whitespace is one of the best tools you have for organizing a visual hierarchy. It is away of pulling
apart monotonous blocks of information.
With Typography
Typography
• Big, bold fonts do the trick for importance, of course. Our eyes are
drawn to dense, contrasted shapes with heavy "visual weight.” The
invitation’s most important line is in a giant font; the second most
important line is in a large font, but not as large; the body text is
normal sized. Similarly, the tiny lightweight font used for the
directions comment indicates “you may want to read this, but it’s not
that big a deal if you miss it.”
• Spatial positioning does something a little more complex here. It’s
being redundant with the whitespace by separating some blocks of
text from others. It’s also enhancing the apparent importance of the
“When” and “Where” text—which are important—by making them
stand on the almost-empty left margin, aligned with the headline.
Typography
• The shapes of some page elements give you clues, too. The
comment about directions is indented underneath the “Where”
text in the example. You can guess that the directions comment
relates to, but is not as important as, the text above it. The
same logic applies to tree views, auxiliary text under links, input
hints under text fields, and so forth. With these and other
familiar structures, like tables, their visual shapes “telegraph”
meaning immediately, before the user even starts to read what’s
in them.
Design
Center Stage pattern deals directly with visual hierarchy by encouraging you to establish a
single large area of the UI to do the main task. Using the Titled Sections pattern helps define the
visual hierarchy, too. And if you develop a Visual make sure it accommodates the different levels
of hierarchy you need, such as titles, headlines, sub-heads, lists, navigation bars, and action
buttons.
These mechanisms can help you lay out a visual hierarchy:
•Upper-left-corner preference
•Whitespace
•Contrasting fonts: the bigger and bolder, the more important the information
•Contrasting foreground and background colors: putting white text on a black background, for
instance, makes a very strong statement on a white page
•Positioning, alignment, and indenting: indented text is subordinate to whatever’s above it
•Graphics such as lines, boxes, and colored bars: things in a box or group go together

Web pages frequently use both color and fonts to differentiate headlines from body text; many
UIs use both group boxes and whitespace to form visual groups. That’s okay.
Having all these “variables” to choose from gives you a lot of design freedom, especially since
they each have a dual role: to show how the UI is organized, and to communicate branding,
emotion, and other non-rational attributes.
VISUAL FLOW
• Visual flow deals with the tracks that readers’ eyes tend to follow as
they scan the page. It’s intimately related to visual hierarchy, of
course—a well-designed visual hierarchy sets up focal points on the
page wherever you need to draw attention to the most important
elements, and visual flow leads the eyes from those points into the
less-important information. As a designer, you should be able to control
visual flow on a page so people follow it in approximately the right
sequence.
• Several forces can work against each other when you try to set up a
visual flow. One is our tendency to read top-to-bottom and left-to-right.
When faced with a monotonous page of text, that’s what you’ll do
naturally; but any visual focal points on the page can distract you from
the usual progression, for better or worse.
• Focal points” are the spots your eyes can’t resist going to. You tend
to follow them from strongest to weakest, and the better pages have
only a few—having too many focal points dilutes the importance of
each one. You can set them up in many different ways, such as by
using whitespace, high contrast, big chunky fonts, spots of
“interesting” color, converging lines, hard edges, faces, and motion.
(Yes, this list resembles the one above for visual hierarchy. Titles,
logos, and critical sections of text or images use these properties to
become focal points.)
• The next time you pick up a magazine, look at some well-designed
ads and notice what your eyes gravitate toward. The best
commercial graphic artists are masters at setting up focal points to
manipulate what you see first.
Design
• Proximity
Put things close together, and viewers will associate them with one another. This is the
basis for strong grouping of content and controls on a UI.
• Similarity
If two things are the same shape, size, color, or orientation, then viewers will also associate
them with each other.
• Continuity
Our eyes want to see continuous lines and curves formed by the alignment of smaller
elements.
• Closure
We also want to see simple closed forms, like rectangles and blobs of whitespace, that
aren’t explicitly drawn for us. Groups of things often appear to be closed forms.
Patterns
The first two, Visual Framework and Center Stage, address the visual
hierarchy of the whole page, screen, or window, regardless of the type of
content you put into that page. You should consider Visual Framework early in
a project, since it affects all the major pages and windows in an interface.
• Visual Framework
• Center Stage
The next group of patterns represents four alternative ways of “chunking”
content on a page or window. They’re useful when you have a lot of stuff to
show on the page at once. Once you’ve made a decision to break up your
content into thematic sections, you need to choose how to present them.
Should they all be visible at once, or can they (or should they) be viewed
independently? Is it okay for users to manipulate those sections on the page?
These patterns deal with visual hierarchy, but they also involve interactivity,
and will help you choose among the specific mechanisms available in UI
toolkits.
Design
• Right/Left Alignment: Right/Left Alignment and Diagonal Balance draw on the
concepts of visual flow, alignment, and other things discussed in this introduction.
They deal with the spatial relationships among smaller, more static elements on a
page, like text and controls.
• Property Sheet: The Property Sheet pattern is a little unusual. It too talks about
spatial relationships among smaller page elements, but it’s as much about content
and interaction as it is about layout. It’s here because when a knowledgeable user
recognizes that a page has a Property Sheet on it, their expectations are set quite
strongly. The layout tells the user precisely how they should interact with the page.

The last three patterns deal with the dynamic aspects of content layout.
Responsive Disclosure and Responsive Enabling are two ways of directing a user
through a series of steps or a set of options; they indicate what can be done at any
point in time, while preventing the user from straying into areas that will get them
into trouble. Liquid Layout is a technique for arranging a page that can change size
and shape at the user’s whim.
• Responsive Disclosure
• Responsive Enabling
• Liquid Layout
• Techniques used to define Titled Sections
• Spacing and alignment: page margins, line spacing, the gaps between
labels and their associated controls, and text and label justification
• Overall layout grid: the placement of things on the page, in columns and/or
rows, taking into account the margins and spacing issues listed earlier
If you’re familiar with graphic design concepts, you may recognize some of
these techniques as comprising a layout grid. A layout grid is a structural
template for a set of pages or layouts. Each individual page is different, but
all pages use specified margins and align their contents along invisible
gridlines. A good Visual Framework does indeed include a layout grid, but it
also includes other aspects of look-and-feel, such as colors, visual details,
and writing style.
Importance of features
• Newspapers need to provide a good balance of news and
features
• Features provide an opportunity to report in depth
• Features provide an opportunity to report good news
• A feature is structured like a bead necklace, and not like an
inverted pyramid Features can and should be about the whole
of human life
Dated features
News features

There are many categories of dated features, but the most common are the
following:
1. Backgrounders
These explain the historical or social setting in which events are taking
place. They help the reader to understand why current events are provoking
the reactions which they do. They are especially helpful in understanding
news in societies and cultures with which readers are unfamiliar.
2.Situation reports
These act like a picture of the present state of affairs in a place which has
been in the news in the past, but is not now producing news stories. What is
the political situation in Uganda, or the security situation in Sri Lanka, or the
economic situation in Ho Chi Minh City?
News features
3.Personality profiles
News is about people, because people make the news. If
something important is happening, it helps readers to understand
it if they are told more about the person behind the news.
4.Revelations
A newspaper, radio or television station's own investigations may
reveal something which the public ought to know. There are often
injustices in any society - social, economic or political - which
journalists can bring to light. Features about inadequate housing
conditions for poor people in towns, child abuse or favouritism in
political appointments can open a society's eyes to its own
problems.
News features
Good news features
• The building of a family business over a period of 20 years is not hard news, because there is no one moment at which
it can be said to have happened. It is good news, though, and it is important to report it in order to give a balanced view
of society, with all its achievements and failures.
• Anniversary features
• These are dated features, in that they must be published at a particular time, but they are like undated features in that
they can be written ahead of time and stored.
• They are features which recall an event from the past, and look again at the event or its implications, or a little-known
aspect of it. The feature will be published on or near an anniversary of the event itself.
• Not every anniversary of an event is suitable for publishing such a feature. Good anniversaries are the first, fifth, tenth,
20th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 100th and any other centenary (200th, 300th etc).
Columns
• There are two types of columns, and they have one thing in common - they are written by one named person and all the
views expressed in that column are his or her views. It is not necessary for a column to be impartial and objective; part
of its function may well be to provoke people by offering a strong or even biased point of view.
• It must certainly have something definite to say. People often enjoy reading a point of view with which they strongly
disagree as much as one with which they agree. They will certainly enjoy either of these more than a column which
offers no point of view at all.
• Columns offer a newspaper an excellent opportunity to introduce two things which readers enjoy, but which are not
generally appropriate elsewhere - calculated bigotry, and humour.
Dated Features
1.News opinion column
This is especially true of the first type of column - the news opinion column. In this a columnist writes about the news and
offers an opinion of the merits of what is being done
and the way it is being done. No junior reporter should expect to be allowed to write a column such as this. Not only is
there the danger of being sued for defamation, but also it will be very difficult for a young person of limited experience to
write a column of sufficient depth.
2.Minority interest column
In this second type of column, regular space can be devoted each day, or each week, to a particular subject such as
cookery, or golf, or pets, or bush-walking, or any activity about which there is something to say and interested people to
buy the paper and read it.
Reviews and previews
Your readers will want to decide whether to pay their hard-earned money to go and see a new play or film, or to hear a
concert, to go to an art exhibition or to eat at a new restaurant. You can help them to decide by publishing previews or
reviews.
Both of these are your description and opinion of the film or play or concert or exhibition; a preview is published before it is
open to the public (as a result of a special press preview) and a review is published as soon as possible after the first
public performance.
3. Diary column
The diary column of a newspaper should not be allowed to become a dustbin for all the material which could not get into
the news columns. Each item should be a genuinely interesting, amusing or illuminating piece of news or gossip about the
world in which we live.
Trend stories: A trend story examines people, things or organizations that are having an impact on society. Trend stories
are popular because people are excited to read or hear about the latest fads.
Undated features
These may be about any subject under the sun (or, indeed, about the sun itself), but it will always help you to decide what
will interest your readers if you ask yourself what your readers do with their time.
• Food and drink
Everybody must eat and drink. As soon as people can afford it, they start to enjoy food and drink as luxuries rather than
just to stay alive. Popular features are recipes, which can be very useful for introducing readers to ways of cooking from
other cultures. You may also wish to publish reviews of restaurants, and even a wine column.
• Travel
As soon as people can afford it, they like to take holidays. When they cannot afford it, they like to dream about holidays. A
lot of money is spent every year on travel, both holiday and business travel. You will offer your readers a service if you
write intelligently and informatively about how to spend their money wisely and enjoy travel to the full.
• Fashion
Fashions change in all sorts of things, but especially in clothes, and many people consider it important that they are up-to-
date in the clothes they wear. An informed regular report on fashion, with good photographs to show readers what is in
fashion, will always be popular - especially with women readers.
• Entertainment
Rock music stars, movie stars, sportsmen and women, millionaires and royalty ... readers often have a great appetite for
knowing all about these people's lives.
• Leisure
There are a host of leisure activities which can be written about, either as regular columns or as single features.
It is often a good idea if you, the writer, go and try parachuting, or diving, or horse riding, or mountaineering, and then write
about it. It makes it more real for the reader and it makes life more interesting for you. A local club will often allow you to
use its facilities
Steps followed in organizing a feature story
• Choose the theme. The theme is similar to the thesis of a scholarly
paper and provides unity and coherence to the piece. It should not
be too broad or too narrow. Several factors come into play when
choosing a theme: Has the story been done before? Is the story of
interest to the audience? Does the story have holding power
(emotional appeal)? What makes the story worthy of being reported?
The theme answers the question, "So what?"

• Write a lead that invites an audience into the story. A summary may
not be the best lead for a feature. A lead block of one or two
paragraphs often begins a feature. Rather than put the news
elements of the story in the lead, the feature writer uses the first two
or three paragraphs to set a mood, to arouse readers, to invite them
inside.
• Provide vital background information. If appropriate, a paragraph or two of
background should be placed high in the story to bring the audience up to date.

• Write clear, concise sentences. Sprinkle direct quotations, observations and

additional background throughout the story. Paragraphs can be written
chronologically or in order of importance.

• Use a thread. Connect the beginning, body and conclusion of the story. Because
a feature generally runs longer than a news story, it is effective to weave a thread
throughout the story, which connects the lead to the body and to the conclusion.
This thread can be a single person, an event or a thing, and it usually highlights
the theme.
• Use transition. Connect paragraphs with transitional words, paraphrases, and direct quotations.
Transition is particularly important in a long feature examining several people or events because it is
the tool writers use to move subtly from one person or topic to the next. Transition keeps readers
from being jarred by the writing.
• Use dialogue when possible. Feature writers, like fiction writers, often use dialogue to keep a story
moving. Of course, feature writers cannot make up dialogue; they listen for it during the reporting
process. Good dialogue is like good observation in a story; it gives readers strong mental images
and keeps them attached to the writing and to the story’s key players.
• Establish a voice. Another key element that holds a feature together is voice, the "signature" or
personal style of each writer. Voice is the personality of the writer and can be used to inject colour,
tone, and subtle emotional commentary into the story. Voice should be used subtly (unless you’re
able to make a fetish of it like Hunter S. Thompson!). The blatant intrusion of a distinctive voice into
news writing has been called gonzo journalism--an irresponsible, if entertaining, trend in
contemporary writing according to traditionalists.
• Conclude with a quotation or another part of the thread. A feature can trail off like a news story or it
can be concluded with a climax. Often, a feature ends where the lead started, with a single person
or event.
Tips on reviewing a film
When reviewing a film, you are advising the audience on whether it is worth going
to see this film, or spend two hours of their life watching it. Make sure you:

• Include all the relevant detail such as film title, director, lead actors, date of
release.
• Summarise the plot concisely, avoiding spoilers and plot twists. Don’t give away
the ending!
• Select and use short extracts/ examples to illustrate what struck you most about
the film. Was a particular scene particularly funny, or poignant? Give an example of
good (or bad) acting.
• Other aspects may be worth commenting on, for example music or special
effects.
• Give your opinion, but always back it up with evidence. Be fair – don’t write off an
entire film because you disliked one actor.
• Make a final judgement, for example you could rate it out of five stars.
Press Release
• A press release is a communication, announcing a story to the public
which is deliberately sent to journalists or media publishers in the
hope they will publish the news contained in them.
• They can come from organisations such as business or charities or
from people like politicians or celebrities.
• Press releases are usually written by press officers working in the
communications or public relations (PR) industry.
• Often, their aim is to get their clients’ message across or to protect
their reputation. Equally, they may want to promote a product or
raise awareness about an issue.
• Press releases are shorter than news stories, often taking up half a
page, or around 120 words.
• newspaper gets news reports from the following:
(a) News bureau in the national capital
(b) News bureau in the state capital
(c) City reporting room at the place of publication
(d) Reporting offices/bureaus at the district head quarters
(e) Stringers at the cities/towns
(f) Correspondents abroad
While the general news desk depends on all the above sources, international desk
depends on the correspondents abroad in addition to news bureau. District news
channel solely depends on the reporting offices/bureaus in the district or on the
stringers.
Local news desk depends on the city reporting room for getting stories to be placed
on the local pages. Sports and business news desks hardly depend on the above
mentioned sources. In most of the newspapers correspondents with relevant
specialization (sports or business) are posted on the desk itself. Thus,
correspondents
• Cartoons mirror of the society- RK Laxman’s Common Man