4 ms·

The changing art of the subeditor: ‘You had to read the type upside down’

20 points by CTOSian 5y ago

Angostura 5y ago
I was a print journalist in the late 1980s onwards. You didn't really have to be able to read the story upside down to any great extent, because journalists had it drilled in to them to write news stories in strict pyramidal style a story could always be cut from the bottom by an arbitary number of sentences. In theory you could have a 1,500 word from-page lead be cut to a two sentence news in brief witgut any re-writes (the kind of thing that cold happen as new stories broke during the night and new editions were layed out. The pyramid structure dictated that the opening sentences always had the crucial who what when where elements of the story in (the tl;dr) with subsequent sentences and paragraphs fleshing out detail and then less important detail and tehn background.
- alanbernstein 5y ago
  Similar in concept to progressive refinement when transmitting images. It would be great if more blog posts took that approach.
  - sdsgyynr 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) Progressive refinement is perhaps a bit more similar to another concept, linked to from that page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_approach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_approach
  - masklinn 5y ago
    > It would be great if more blog posts took that approach But of course the incentives ensure it’s not the case: for a newssheet, the goal is to get the reader to buy the sheet, once they have you’re happy. For online properties however you need time-on-site and ad impressions, so the longer you make the reader linger the more money you have. Therefore clickbait headlines resolved as late as possible, with as much pointless fluff in the middle as feasible.
nielsbot 5y ago
I recommend everyone watch Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu. It's a fascinating documentary filmed on the last day the New York Times using hot metal type, galleys, printer's stones, etc. https://vimeo.com/127605643 https://vimeo.com/127605643 "A film created by Carl Schlesinger and David Loeb Weiss documenting the last day of hot metal typesetting at The New York Times. This film shows the entire newspaper production process from hot-metal typesetting to creating stereo moulds to high-speed press operation. At the end of the film, the new typesetting and photographic production process is shown in contrast to the old ways." Pretty interesting to see the then-new computer typesetting technology and how primitive it was compared to computers today.

20 points by CTOSian 5y ago

I was a print journalist in the late 1980s onwards. You didn't really have to be able to read the story upside down to any great extent, because journalists had it drilled in to them to write news stories in strict pyramidal style a story could always be cut from the bottom by an arbitary number of sentences. In theory you could have a 1,500 word from-page lead be cut to a two sentence news in brief witgut any re-writes (the kind of thing that cold happen as new stories broke during the night and new editions were layed out. The pyramid structure dictated that the opening sentences always had the crucial who what when where elements of the story in (the tl;dr) with subsequent sentences and paragraphs fleshing out detail and then less important detail and tehn background.

alanbernstein 5y ago
Similar in concept to progressive refinement when transmitting images. It would be great if more blog posts took that approach.
- sdsgyynr 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) Progressive refinement is perhaps a bit more similar to another concept, linked to from that page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_approach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_approach
- masklinn 5y ago
  > It would be great if more blog posts took that approach But of course the incentives ensure it’s not the case: for a newssheet, the goal is to get the reader to buy the sheet, once they have you’re happy. For online properties however you need time-on-site and ad impressions, so the longer you make the reader linger the more money you have. Therefore clickbait headlines resolved as late as possible, with as much pointless fluff in the middle as feasible.

nielsbot 5y ago

I recommend everyone watch Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu. It's a fascinating documentary filmed on the last day the New York Times using hot metal type, galleys, printer's stones, etc. https://vimeo.com/127605643 https://vimeo.com/127605643 "A film created by Carl Schlesinger and David Loeb Weiss documenting the last day of hot metal typesetting at The New York Times. This film shows the entire newspaper production process from hot-metal typesetting to creating stereo moulds to high-speed press operation. At the end of the film, the new typesetting and photographic production process is shown in contrast to the old ways." Pretty interesting to see the then-new computer typesetting technology and how primitive it was compared to computers today.