4 ms·

Context: I'm a former copy editor with experience working for digital-only (e.g. Forbes.com) as well as print-driven magazines newspapers. One of the things th

by jawns 12y ago

Context: I'm a former copy editor with experience working for digital-only (e.g. Forbes.com) as well as print-driven magazines newspapers. One of the things that's difficult when designing a CMS that works for both digital and print is that there are far fewer space constraints online than in print, and you want to ultimately generate an article that works in both formats. (Oh, and on mobile, and in a condensed version in a sister publication, and an expanded version for the wire.) For hard news, the inverted pyramid format comes in handy -- if you don't have enough space in the print edition, you just lop off the last few paragraphs -- but for things like op/eds and magazine-style pieces, that doesn't always work. What I'd love to see is a CMS (and, more fundamentally, a way of representing the underlying data) in which writers and editors can designate certain paragraphs or sentences or phrases as more important than others, so that even a story with a complex format can be dynamically "scaled," sort of like what web designers do with media queries, or what image editors do with seam carving.

charonn0 12y ago
> a way of representing the underlying data in which writers and editors can designate certain paragraphs or sentences or phrases as more important than others Doesn't HTML do this? <h1> is more important than <h2>, etc.
- grrowl 12y ago
 You're missing the mark of this scenario — the headings are all more important than paragraphs, but maybe a summary or "background info" paragraph is clearly less integral than its nearby paragraphs, or maybe the second half of an intro feels a bit "fluffy" but still adds. If you have space constraints, they'd be the first priority to go.
- jawns 12y ago
 Well, yes, but in only the broadest sense possible. For the purposes of an op-ed piece or a feature story, though, you'd need to have much more control. Actually, this comment illustrates that such a system might not be as easy as you'd think. Some natural-language processing/generation would come in handy to ensure the following <num-of-bullets> things: * proper capitalization * subject/verb agreement * proper punctuation * number agreement
 - charonn0 12y ago
 Aren't these the job of a human editor? (or is this the reason why my e-newspapers have so many copy editing errors?)
- e12e 12y ago
 No. Or rather; that would be pretty horrible html from a semantic standpoint -- and perhaps more importantly, it would need parsing into text anyway -- so might as well be more explicitly different from html. That said, html5 is pretty free in terms of what you put in the document -- personally I'd probably prefer a "weight" or "weight-group" attribute applied to elements and/or set on span-elements. Weight might be a float between 0.0 and 1.0 (pick one to be most important, maybe let "heavy" weights "sink to the bottom", and "fall off"... ?) -- the idea of a "weight-group" would be to group headers and/or phrases/paragraphs to be dropped together -- eg for this comment, you might want to drop all references to "weight-group" -- if you wanted a shorter, simpler version. Too far down this path and you're square in natural language processing territory -- but it should be easy to mock up a web app that lets the author/editor preview how different versions would render/look -- and allow adding/removing tags/weights to the text(s) as appropriate. Perhaps one useful extension would be auto-promoting a paragraph and/or (depending on format/space) part of a paragraph, or just a header -- to be used as a "deck" and/or summary (for eg rss feeds) etc?
- coldtea 12y ago
 Those are for headers. Hence the "h". Not for paragraphs or sentences.
 - deleted 12y ago
 [deleted]
resu_nimda 12y ago
Assuming such a tool existed, would writers be ready to use it? Is there much precedent for writing "scalable copy" to the level of detail you describe? Seems like it would be pretty difficult and the necessary magic (e.g. in the example you posted, cutting out the "Well, " would require capitalization of "yes") could lead to unexpected results and awkward flow.
- jawns 12y ago
  Would writers be ready to use it? Not at first. Well, at least not the older writers who are still resentful that they have to write with a digital audience in mind. But those writers are dropping like flies. Is there much precedent for writing scalable copy? Yes! I used to have to cut wire stories to fit. Let's say 25 newspapers run the same wire story, each with different length requirements. That's 25 editors who have to make different cuts, and some might in haste cut sections that are actually pretty important. Some writers give cues to the editors -- "cut this graf if necessary" -- to avoid that happening. Is there much NEED for scalable copy? Yes! It potentially saves copy editors a lot of work. And if the "magic" can be automated, it saves a lot of time, too!
  - thathonkey 12y ago
    Interesting idea but I'm skeptical that any writer would ever be able to adopt something so "technical" (for lack of a better word). Writers just don't think like that and I don't think they ever will. It's a wall between creative types and tech types that is here to stay, imho.
    - ryanklee 12y ago
      I'm a writer and I think "like that". I know many other writers that do, as well. And it's not surprising, because writing itself is a technology in a traditional sense. Further, it's more "tech" oriented (in the more contemporary sense) than you give it credit for. It's very close to coding: It's structural, admits of procedure, copy reuse, partakes of historical design advancements, adapts to tech around it, etc. Fuzzier, maybe. But try and do it well, sometime. The edges are harder than you might think. (And, as an exasperated aside: Ugh!! There is no wall between creative types and tech types! No such types exist in the first place. Only weird, sticky prejudices.)
stdbrouw 12y ago
I was once involved in developing a system like the one you describe, and it turns out it's a really hard problem, because for most non-trivial articles you want to do more than just skip a paragraph: you cut an explanation here, which means you need another word there and possibly that sentence doesn't make sense anymore so you'd rewrite that... and as a result, as a copy editor, you very quickly lose track of the flow of a story if there's two or more different variants all merged into one. You mention elsewhere that "It potentially saves copy editors a lot of work." but I think you'd have to be a pretty darn good copy editor to keep multiple versions of a story in your head at the same time and ensure all of them keep their flow and coherence. Perhaps it really just is faster to read and edit any and all versions of a story separately. What you're describing could work, but only if people changed the way they wrote to make it easy to cut things out without having to rewrite other things. But then you're back to something like the inverted pyramid. What we ended up doing instead was to give authors the ability to "fork" stories into different editions that are, from that moment on, edited completely independently from each other, but behind the scenes keep track of which parts of the story are still the same, so you can provide intelligent diffs, notifications and potentially even merges like "In the web edition it talks about a guy named Jon but the print edition refers to John -- which is it?" without changing the experience for writers and editors too much.
grayclhn 12y ago
Finally, a role for the DFW-inspired footnote-heavy writing style! Edit: to be more constructive, it doesn't seem like this would be hard to represent in the underlying data: ... omnia haec, quaecumque feret uoluntas caelitum, temptare simul parati, pauca nuntiate meae puellae non bona dicta. cum suis uiuat ualeatque moechis, quos simul complexa tenet trecentos, nullum amans uere, sed identidem omnium ilia rumpens; <aside> The next part is usually taken at face value, but, really? Try reading it in the most insincere and melodramatic way possible and it becomes quite funny. His love is cut down like a flower by the plow? Seriously? Have you read the rest of Catullus's poetry? Have you read the rest of this poem? The last verse was about how many lovers his ex girlfriend is sleeping with (300 at once). </aside> nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem, qui illius culpa cecidit uelut prati ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam tactus aratro est I'm sure there are much better ways to do it than that; that seems like a workable starting point, though. But I'm really surprised that newspapers and magazines really present different versions of the same story to digital readers vs. print readers.
grumps 12y ago
NPR has a system call COPE (Create Once Publish Everywhere) use to COPA Create Once Publish Anywhere but they modified the data structure again. The system takes a DBA kind of approach to defining your "model." Ie byline, really really short abstract. etc. It's really tech agnostic.

by jawns 12y ago

charonn0 12y ago

> a way of representing the underlying data in which writers and editors can designate certain paragraphs or sentences or phrases as more important than others Doesn't HTML do this? <h1> is more important than <h2>, etc.

grrowl 12y ago
You're missing the mark of this scenario — the headings are all more important than paragraphs, but maybe a summary or "background info" paragraph is clearly less integral than its nearby paragraphs, or maybe the second half of an intro feels a bit "fluffy" but still adds. If you have space constraints, they'd be the first priority to go.
jawns 12y ago
Well, yes, but in only the broadest sense possible. For the purposes of an op-ed piece or a feature story, though, you'd need to have much more control. Actually, this comment illustrates that such a system might not be as easy as you'd think. Some natural-language processing/generation would come in handy to ensure the following <num-of-bullets> things: * proper capitalization * subject/verb agreement * proper punctuation * number agreement
- charonn0 12y ago
 Aren't these the job of a human editor? (or is this the reason why my e-newspapers have so many copy editing errors?)
e12e 12y ago
No. Or rather; that would be pretty horrible html from a semantic standpoint -- and perhaps more importantly, it would need parsing into text anyway -- so might as well be more explicitly different from html. That said, html5 is pretty free in terms of what you put in the document -- personally I'd probably prefer a "weight" or "weight-group" attribute applied to elements and/or set on span-elements. Weight might be a float between 0.0 and 1.0 (pick one to be most important, maybe let "heavy" weights "sink to the bottom", and "fall off"... ?) -- the idea of a "weight-group" would be to group headers and/or phrases/paragraphs to be dropped together -- eg for this comment, you might want to drop all references to "weight-group" -- if you wanted a shorter, simpler version. Too far down this path and you're square in natural language processing territory -- but it should be easy to mock up a web app that lets the author/editor preview how different versions would render/look -- and allow adding/removing tags/weights to the text(s) as appropriate. Perhaps one useful extension would be auto-promoting a paragraph and/or (depending on format/space) part of a paragraph, or just a header -- to be used as a "deck" and/or summary (for eg rss feeds) etc?
coldtea 12y ago
Those are for headers. Hence the "h". Not for paragraphs or sentences.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

resu_nimda 12y ago

Assuming such a tool existed, would writers be ready to use it? Is there much precedent for writing "scalable copy" to the level of detail you describe? Seems like it would be pretty difficult and the necessary magic (e.g. in the example you posted, cutting out the "Well, " would require capitalization of "yes") could lead to unexpected results and awkward flow.

jawns 12y ago
Would writers be ready to use it? Not at first. Well, at least not the older writers who are still resentful that they have to write with a digital audience in mind. But those writers are dropping like flies. Is there much precedent for writing scalable copy? Yes! I used to have to cut wire stories to fit. Let's say 25 newspapers run the same wire story, each with different length requirements. That's 25 editors who have to make different cuts, and some might in haste cut sections that are actually pretty important. Some writers give cues to the editors -- "cut this graf if necessary" -- to avoid that happening. Is there much NEED for scalable copy? Yes! It potentially saves copy editors a lot of work. And if the "magic" can be automated, it saves a lot of time, too!
- thathonkey 12y ago
  Interesting idea but I'm skeptical that any writer would ever be able to adopt something so "technical" (for lack of a better word). Writers just don't think like that and I don't think they ever will. It's a wall between creative types and tech types that is here to stay, imho.
  - ryanklee 12y ago
    I'm a writer and I think "like that". I know many other writers that do, as well. And it's not surprising, because writing itself is a technology in a traditional sense. Further, it's more "tech" oriented (in the more contemporary sense) than you give it credit for. It's very close to coding: It's structural, admits of procedure, copy reuse, partakes of historical design advancements, adapts to tech around it, etc. Fuzzier, maybe. But try and do it well, sometime. The edges are harder than you might think. (And, as an exasperated aside: Ugh!! There is no wall between creative types and tech types! No such types exist in the first place. Only weird, sticky prejudices.)

stdbrouw 12y ago

I was once involved in developing a system like the one you describe, and it turns out it's a really hard problem, because for most non-trivial articles you want to do more than just skip a paragraph: you cut an explanation here, which means you need another word there and possibly that sentence doesn't make sense anymore so you'd rewrite that... and as a result, as a copy editor, you very quickly lose track of the flow of a story if there's two or more different variants all merged into one. You mention elsewhere that "It potentially saves copy editors a lot of work." but I think you'd have to be a pretty darn good copy editor to keep multiple versions of a story in your head at the same time and ensure all of them keep their flow and coherence. Perhaps it really just is faster to read and edit any and all versions of a story separately. What you're describing could work, but only if people changed the way they wrote to make it easy to cut things out without having to rewrite other things. But then you're back to something like the inverted pyramid. What we ended up doing instead was to give authors the ability to "fork" stories into different editions that are, from that moment on, edited completely independently from each other, but behind the scenes keep track of which parts of the story are still the same, so you can provide intelligent diffs, notifications and potentially even merges like "In the web edition it talks about a guy named Jon but the print edition refers to John -- which is it?" without changing the experience for writers and editors too much.

grayclhn 12y ago

Finally, a role for the DFW-inspired footnote-heavy writing style! Edit: to be more constructive, it doesn't seem like this would be hard to represent in the underlying data: ... omnia haec, quaecumque feret uoluntas caelitum, temptare simul parati, pauca nuntiate meae puellae non bona dicta. cum suis uiuat ualeatque moechis, quos simul complexa tenet trecentos, nullum amans uere, sed identidem omnium ilia rumpens; <aside> The next part is usually taken at face value, but, really? Try reading it in the most insincere and melodramatic way possible and it becomes quite funny. His love is cut down like a flower by the plow? Seriously? Have you read the rest of Catullus's poetry? Have you read the rest of this poem? The last verse was about how many lovers his ex girlfriend is sleeping with (300 at once). </aside> nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem, qui illius culpa cecidit uelut prati ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam tactus aratro est I'm sure there are much better ways to do it than that; that seems like a workable starting point, though. But I'm really surprised that newspapers and magazines really present different versions of the same story to digital readers vs. print readers.

grumps 12y ago

NPR has a system call COPE (Create Once Publish Everywhere) use to COPA Create Once Publish Anywhere but they modified the data structure again. The system takes a DBA kind of approach to defining your "model." Ie byline, really really short abstract. etc. It's really tech agnostic.