Editing was a blast. I feel like I’ve written a million things in these last four years at the University of Iowa, but rarely do I ever get to play the role of editor. I must say, it was a nice hat to wear.

Brian and Rebecca did an excellent job with their respective stories. The topics were compelling, the writing was tight, and very few changes needed to be made. I mostly did a handful of line edits with each and suggested a few minor structural changes. Brian and Rebecca were really pleasant to work with, and I think we complimented each other really well.

What can you say about the man that is Mason Kerns? Part of me was a little nervous to edit him because my initial thought was, “What could he possibly need help with?!” But, in the end, I felt like I brought something to the table. While his piece was clearly shorter than Brian’s and Rebecca’s, I was able to make some helpful line edits.

I learned a few things:
1) Sometimes giving people space off the bat gives them more breathing room to ensure a job well done
2) The writers make the editors job; whether it’s an easy or hard job is up to them
3) I really, really preferred editing to writing when it comes to politics

All in all, a very positive experience with the final edition of Caucus on the Cob.

– Bobby Loesch

I am not an editor. Identifying punctuation errors, sentence fragments and redundancy is not my idea of a good time. I’m usually the one being scrutinized, watching as my precious words are rearranged, or even worse, deleted. After the last edition of Caucus on the Cob, however, I revoke all previous statements about every editor I’ve ever had. It’s not easy being an editor. Tracking down unfinished stories and encouraging your writers to produce quality work is not super-fun work. Especially when the writers have two weeks of school left before winter break.

In any case, I have come to the conclusion that every journalist should edit at least once in their careers, because editing others work will ultimately make you a better writer.

And, thank God, I had a good team of reporters. Two stories about presidential candidates, who, I’m embarrassed to admit, I knew nothing about before reading my reporters’ stories. Another story, Caucus the Musical !, was a fun twist to the monotony of hard political stories and reporter, Kyle Gassiott, produced a great slide show with audio. I have a lot to learn from this guy in the realm of radio.

All and all, I’m very pleased with this week’s results and am eager, believe it or not, to edit in the future.

—Tessa Ruddy

Editing the last round of Caucus on the Cob was a circus of schedules. Reporters for this edition juggled final papers and end of term assignments alongside their caucus stories. Drafts were sent in on publishing day and last minute multimedia glitches were trouble shot during class. However, the stories did, in the end, come together. Here is the rundown of the pieces I edited.

Christine wrote “Warming up to the caucus,” a piece on global warming, its impact on Iowans, and how the presidential candidates are addressing it. The video interview she included is well shot and edited to a simple, clean effect. Christine also took a beautiful photo that sucks viewers into her story. The composite of her work offers a nice bundle of information that is visually appealing and qualitatively engaging.

Jerry’s story “Where do Iowa state reps stand?” offers detailed information about who elected Iowa officials are supporting in the upcoming presidential race. I encouraged him to interview a political science professor about the importance of elected officials’ endorsements for campaigns, or even conduct a vox pop to see if people know and are interested in who their representatives are supporting. That, unfortunately, didn’t happen. However, he did do a great job of researching the endorsement data. A colorful flash graphic featuring the portraits of each candidate accompanied and drew attention to the story.

Dave reported on Joe Biden’s visit to the Iowa City Public Library last week in his article “Biden speaks of Iran disaster.” He created a podcast to go along with the article, which offers clips of Biden’s speech as well as Dave’s own commentary. The audio is somewhat scratchy, but the message is clear. I suggested the story open itself to the bigger picture of the Iowa caucus, and was glad to see the viewpoints of Paul, Huckabee, Clinton, Dodd, and Edwards reflected in the article. This piece is a nice example of a pointed event related to the overall issue of caucus season.

I found that working in a peer-to-peer setting made the role of authority difficult. It put me, as an editor, in a strange position; I understood end-of-semester stress yet also needed time to devote to editing.

In the end we all pulled through. Caucus on the Cob will go down in the Online Journalism annals as a great endeavor.

-Kate Casper

Upon hearing that a large portion of Online Journalism would be dedicated to a class-created online news portal, I thought, “Great. This will be just like regular reporting and editing; I’ll simply have to copy mine and others’ articles on to the web.”

Not so, I soon learned. Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V, typically my best friends as I write and transfer articles - from my e-mail account to a Word document, from a website to my e-mail account, from a website to a Word Document, etc. - proved irrelevant. The portal requires one to edit the stories, uploaded by the reporters, within the portal. After I got used to it, I surmised that it was probably easier - in terms of simply editing text - than my tried-and-true method. But knowing how to link to PDFs and Excel Spreadsheets, or to embed photos, videos, and graphs, requires a certain know-how that I do not possess. Accordingly, I ended up relying on others for help accomplishing those tasks, so I probably did not learn as much as I should have. The good news, though, is that I’ll probably have less apprehension embracing new media technologies now that I tackled such a project for the first time.

As far as the stories themselves, I must say I was lucky; the reporters harvested sources well and delivered clean copy to me in a timely manner. Kyle bounced back well after a setback - the story he set out to write, about a play that satirizes the Iowa Caucuses, was rendered implausible due to conflicts with dates - and wrote a solid piece about a family who converts their house into a Caucus precinct every fourth January; had I not read Kyle’s piece, I would have had no clue that small, homely Caucus-settings, while not thriving as they used to, are still existent nonetheless. The whole concept of inviting 10 strangers into your home to vote for candidates was certainly intriguing to me, and I’m sure other readers felt similarly. Kate’s piece on Hillary Clinton painted a vivid portrait of how women are enthused about Hillary Clinton in some realms, and ambivalent about her in others. It was personal - I felt, reading the draft, that I knew her sources - yet “fair and balanced” (in reality - and not FOX News’ version of it), as she conducted a plethora of interviews from across the Democratic spectrum and was extremely vigilant about not relying heavily on one source. The writers, I emphasize, were great: they certainly made my life easier.

So, on the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed my Caucus on the Cob editing experience - particularly because I learned much about two topics while editing, and learned how to do some menial stuff in terms of online journalism. That said, I now dislike computers even more.

 –Mason Kerns

Story ideas eaten up, homework caked on from other courses and Thanksgiving break dangling in front of our faces caused my set of writers to show up on pitch day uncertain of their ideas or worse with no ideas at all. As much as I hate editing, since I feel that I have no right let alone no talent, to alter someone’s piece I embraced this position, which left me to clean up rather than create ideas.

Of the three pieces I would be editing, two of my writers had not yet permanently chosen a topic to write on. Checking my inbox and biting my nails as the days passed the e-mails updating their status started to roll in causing me to take sigh of relief. Wiping my brow clean of sweat I tackled Alli’s piece, which dealt with Colbert and his run for presidency, had only a few spelling and grammar corrections (thank you Alli!) and I feel will pull in student readers (since most students get their news by watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report).

The second piece, written by Shawna, looked at a group I was unaware of, Caucus for Priorities, and whom they would vote for based on certain factors. With one critical source a no-show, Shawna was forced to sit on her draft for a few days. The piece barely had time to settle in my inbox before I ran a fine-toothed comb through each paragraph, sentence and word. Composed mostly of quotes and facts to double check the piece was quite easy to edit.

Finally, we have Bobby who reminded people such as me or brought to light to others a website that lists every political leader and where they stand on an issue. Bobby bounced between a few ideas and I am happy that he settled on this informational piece on a site that I find to be extremely important.

Well, this editor must now turn herself into a writer once again and squeeze one more idea out of her already exhausted brain for the final edition of Caucus on the Cob.   

- Rebecca Seftor 

Wow, what a week. I never thought editing Caucus on the Cob would be such a challenge. Of the three stories I edited, I had difficulty with one in particular.

Bill Sindewald’s original plan never came to fruition, so, we brainstormed. This writer admittedly hates politics which made this even more of a challenge. After discussing some of his interests, of which, women seemed to be the top answer, we thought why not try to pick up women at a political rally. It seemed to make sense and was a common practice during the 1950s communism scare. So Bill went to a rally for Chris Dodd, blew his opportunity with the chick at the door, and ended up alone for another night. After molding this piece I was presented (which took some time), we FINALLY got it posted. Even though the finished product wasn’t quite what I imagined, I give Bill props for trying (I still wish he would’ve picked up an older woman).

Mason Kerns’ piece on University of Iowa faculty contributions to presidential candidates was stellar. I wasn’t surprised by the fact that much of the faculty supports Obama, but it was all new information to me. The writing and use of charts was excellent and he made editing very, very easy. I trusted Mason’s judgment from the start, gave him an extended deadline, and I’m glad I did. Wonderful work Mason!

Alli Lubben’s piece on candidate music was amazing. I know she did a lot of research and I felt she put it together very well. We changed her lead to make it a bit more compelling, but for the most part, flowed nicely and I really enjoyed the content. She also had great use of links which, I feel, adds substance to the story and is often overlooked. Nice work Alli!

In conclusion, it was a great learning experience for me and I felt I, and the writers, contributed greatly to the Caucus on the Cob experiment.

- Jay Knoll

I found the article ‘Caucus Issues: Where do they stand?’ very beneficial to oversee. I gave our reporter, Jerry Lalor, a lot of freedom when developing this story. It was originaly slated to be a conversational piece describing positions of the various candidates. After gathering the information about each candidate we thought that the information would bore the reader if it were written out in paragraphs, so we tried it in a more organized bulleted list and graph format. Lalor did a great job of taking control of the idea and creating the format that is shown. At the end of the article, Lalor embedded a link to a quiz that will advise you who your ideal candidate is based on your responses to the questions. I thought this was a superb fir for the content of the article as it lead the reader on to explore more about the ideals of the candidates.

-Phil Ott

We edited entries during midterm week, which, bottom line, amounts to complications.

Poor Christine was mistakenly sent to the wrong meeting by the Obama campaign. Her original article was to revolve around a group of high school students, but instead, the woman she spoke to on the phone sent her to a UI students for Obama meeting. Christine was resourceful, though, and was still able to write an article on young people’s involvement with the Obama campaign, while tailoring it to college student impact. Her article, Young People are not interested in Politics? Here comes a surprise. was a great addition to Caucus on the Cob. Her use of the Harvard poll and other statistics helped a reader visualize college student impact. Well done.

Rebecca’s article was fun to edit, because it was fun to read. Definitely out of the ordinary, kind of Oxford English dictionary. I was somewhat nervous Monday night when we were posting though, and we had to resize the text by editing the html code. Luckily David Domingo was able to do this really quickly and everything worked out find.

No problem’s at all with Dave’s story. I think it was a good topic as well: people talk a lot about how candidates are divided on what to do with troops in Iraq; not a lot of people talk about policy divisions among the troops.

All in all, though, I think that all’s well that ends well. Things came together, once people had some solid time to work, they got things done… I think everybody worked together and produced a good product for Caucus on the Cob once again. Good work, everybody!

–Shawna Paca

              I was kind of nervous being an editor for the news portal, because it’s not something I’m used to. I think one of the scariest things to do as a writer is pitch a story idea with the chance of having it shot down faster than a fat goose. During the pitching session I just felt out of place but I still feel that I did a good job. We split up the stories so that Jerry and I edited three stories and Christine was given two to edit since English is her second language. After the stories were pitched and approved, it felt like I became a boss for a business. I was getting emails and calls for updates for the stories. I felt very
important, I acted very professional and gave good comments all the while in my head I was kind of laughing how serious my writers were taking me because I was not used to it.

    After I received all three of my stories I had to go through three completely different editing processes. The first one I received was written really well, it just needed a few things fixed. I told the person and they fixed it making the story. The second one I edited, really had nothing wrong with it so all I have to give to the writer were my personal opinions, this made me feel kind of like a coward because I didn’t give him any feedback, but at the same time I felt the piece was good without any changes. The last story I edited was the hardest, it was the longest and it had a lot of things going on in the story. There were a lot of grammatical errors and I felt there was a lot of language I didn’t understand. I spent a good thirty minutes editing before I gave it back to the writer. After I finished I really think I polished the story into a good piece. Overall the editing process was very different. Luckily I had good writers to edit so my work was minimal, I can see how a editorial job can be very time consuming especially if you have more than three writers to look after.

-Bill Sindewald

Being an editor was a special challenge for me this week. English is not my first language and so I was wondering: How am I supposed to correct articles from people who speak English since they are two years old? They have a lead of eight years!

But: This week taught me that editing is not only about language. When Allie decided to write an article about Giuliani’s visit in Iowa City we all liked the idea of adding some video. I am a lot into TV; Allie has not handled a camera before, let alone editing software. So here was my chance. I shot the video, she wrote the article, we edited the video together and here I was alone correcting the article.

But reading it I found that more than finding spelling mistakes and missing commas editing is about structure, flow and context. And the more I read the more useful I found it that English is not my first language; because words that I don’t know are in all probability words that people don’t usually use. Or would you ever talk about incipient acquaintanceship when you got to know someone new? No? I wouldn’t. But this was not an example from this week’s edition.

- Christine Elsaesser

Heading into my final semester in the J-School, editing has become a creature of habit, than something that I look forward to. I have never understood why - rather that evaluating and coaching peers is difficult whether in a academic setting, or a professional one. Despite the lack of true confidence, I feel that each time I am asked to put on the editors hat, it gets easier because of the workmanship that is present from the authors. This time proved to be no different.

Jay, Tessa, and Shawna, all stepped up to the plate during what could be considered one of the busiest weeks of the semester, and swung the bat for a hit. Again, despite the challenges that faced Shawna with some posting issues, all the stories came to fruition and added a special, history, look, and insight into this amazing presidential race.

I found working with the authors enjoyable, and took a very laid back approach even when deadlines were threatening. Posting happened because of the efforts of the authors, editors, Christine and Bill, and with the addition of the multimedia, I was very pleased with the overall edition. I feel that our group raised the bar for the following editions remaining in the semester.

~Jerry Lalor~

As an editor I realized the extra utility of the class newsportal. Not only does in help students learn to write stories in the online format and work with various multimedia, it breaks us away from the “do your own thing” attitude that students fall into when they are not involved with group projects.

During our story proposal conversations it class, as editor I was responsibly for approving the proposals and bringing up any issues or problems the idea may have. In a student-to-student relationship this can be difficult, as you do not want to be overly critical or too lenient with your fellow classmates. I handled this by making practical suggestions without seeming negative.

As editors it was our responsibility to enforce deadlines and keep our classmates on track. This can be difficult since I didn’t want to seem overbearing. I dealt with this by keeping our writers informed and trusting they would have everything in on time. Luckily that worked out just fine.

In terms of editing, I checked for minor errors and made small changes when necessary. I didn’t want to alter the work too much, so my technique was fairly hands-off when if came to specifics of the articles.

My fellow editor, Brian, was easy to work with and overall I enjoyed the experience of editing.

- Dave Soltis

My experiences as an editor have come almost exclusively in an editing course taught by an excellent professor, Don McLeese. In that course, we learned to balance talking about story focus and line editing, story placement against news value and the like. As I sat down to start looking at pieces, that entire course came flooding back to me.

Sitting down with each story was fun. Reading through it the first time as a reader, then nitpicking back through it. I’d like to think I wasn’t entirely too harsh on the stories, as I really liked them all. Some had more work to do than others, but none of them came across as unimportant or trivial.

In editing one particular piece, it was my first chance working with a writer who wasn’t a native English speaker. One might imagine that would make the job more difficult, but it actually was quite the opposite. As someone who’s spoken a loose version of English all my life, I take things for granted, and words just sort of spill out. It’s really refreshing, and I think ultimately more in line with the goal of journalism, to work with someone who puts great thought into each word. Personally, I can’t force myself to treasure and contemplate my magical and delicious prose, but I’m glad people out there can.

I think next time around, I may work for a bit more dialog between writer and editor during the reporting and writing process, so it’s not as much of a crap shoot.

-Brian Finley

P.S.: For other editors, I find editing over a bag of Panchero’s Chips and Salsa to be particularly enjoyable.  Brain food, for sure.