THE WAY IT WAS OPINIONS INSERTED IN NEWS STORIES ONCE WERE STRICTLY TABU
HAL MORRIS WWW . GRUMPYEDITOR . COM
Just like everything else , the media business has changed radically . Thanks to veteran newsman and columnist , Hal Morris , who hangs out at www . grumpyeditor . com these days , here is a peek into the way it was for you journalists and PR people out there .
In these days of " fake news ," how did working as a news staffer differ in earlier years ?
Getting the story first , ahead of the competition , was paramount then . Still is . But so was accuracy .
And most important --- no editorializing .
Editors were very firm in staffers not expressing opinions in stories when typewriters were the prime mode of composing copy .
Rule of the day was : " Leave the editorializing to the editorial pages ." Not so these days . It ' s rather common now for news stories to show bias of omission , misleading information , incomplete details or slanted reporting .
One factor never mentioned with that " slanting " is that reporting / writing news stories is being conducted now by fewer journalism graduates .
Holding a political science degree seems to be popular these days .
With that kind of college training , it ' s like taking your dog to a veterinarian who holds an engineering degree .
Whether it ' s the New York Times , Los Angeles Times , Washington Post , CNN or MSNBC , reporters and writers seem to have great difficulty keeping opinions to themselves .
And often they get right to it in opening statements .
Back in the typewriter days , even without social media , competition was keen .
For example , in Los Angeles , where I worked , there were six daily newspapers in the metropolitan area . Competition in getting to the story --- whether a shooting or a ribbon cutting --- was fierce .
The Los Angeles Mirror and Herald- Express , as afternoon newspapers , had five deadlines a day ( six if including a " replate " that included the day ' s stock market action ).
So reporters , rewrite staff , city desk , copy desk , typesetters and makeup editors all had to work with dispatch to get the presses rolling with latest developments in efforts to beat " the other guy " in getting
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