Cainta Catholic College

Diocesan College of the Diocese of Antipolo

Regina Lucis Newsletter

Guidelines and Responsibilities
for Campus Journalists
College Department

Responsibilities of the Editorial board

 Double check all names, titles/ designations, and name of offices.

 Simplify the language.
 Make the language brisk by making the sentences short and lively. Cut out dead
phrases, useless words, dull verbs, and needless details.
 Cross out doubtful facts especially those that will take time to verify.
 Don't trust memory; always check records.
 Be on the outlook for personal prejudices and biases.
 Make each copy fair, tasteful, readable, and neat.
 Check euphemisms.
 Block-off clichés.
 Check grammar and usage.
 Rewrite.

The Guidelines for Section Editors

 Plan issues ahead with the staff
 Schedule significant stories for each issue with the staff
 Assign stories to reporters
 Give reporters tips on how to get certain stories
 Edit the copies to make them clear and readable
 Search for errors and make the necessary corrections
 Lay out page/s
 Supervise printing

The Duties and Responsibilities of Layout Artists

 Examine closely the page that makes an assessment by answering the following
questions:
o What makes the page unattractive?
o What are printed on the page?
o Which of the contents is the most important?
 Discuss your answers and arrive at a consensus

The Guidelines for layout artist

  Arrange your stories according to their degree of importance.
 Keep the arrangement of your materials attracts.
Balanced make-up
This is the type of make-up wherein the stories, headlines, and pictures are balanced against
each other to establish the symmetry in a page.
For example, if a two column news report is placed on the left. Any large news head on the
right has a counterpart on the left.
A picture on either side of a page is balanced with another picture or an equally important
news report on the other.

Brace make-up
This type of make-up is used when a very significant story is laid out on page in such a way that
it overshadows all other stories.
For example, the significant story is placed under the large head in the upper right-hand corner
to attract the reader's attention to that part of the page.

Broken make-up
Contrary to the balanced and brace make-up, the broken make-up places no particular
emphasis on a particular Story.
What it tries to do is to give emphasis on most of the stories in the newspaper through wise
and careful choice and use of materials.
Utmost care is necessary, however, when using this type of make-up because the desire to
present some materials equally can create a sense of unfair treatment of stories and
disorganized layout.

Variations and combinations

Newspapers are free not to use the same type of make-up over and over again. The decision as
to which type is most suitable and will be most effective depends on the materials to be
printed.
For example, when two equally significant stories should came out in the same issue,
Balanced make-up may be used.
If there is only one significant story, the brace make-up is appropriate.
On some occasions, a combination of a certain types of a make-up may be essential to make
the presentation of the materials attractive and interesting.

Note: Familiarize yourself further with the various types of layout design.

The Guidelines for Photo Editors

 It must feature a prominent personality, event, or place.
 It should tell a story by itself.
 It should have a certain degree of human interest. Something odd or unusual never fails
to draw attention.
 It should capture a portion of the drama of life.
 It should show a person or a person’s action. It posed or stiff pictures create a sense of
inactivity and lifelessness.
 It must express the recent event. In other words it must be timely.
  A good picture should clearly show a faces of its subject matter. A picture of
unrecoverable faces means nothing to readers.
 A picture must be properly cropped so that the desire image may be highlighted
Cropping means getting rid of a desirable and unnecessary images or portions of the
picture.
 Any picture meant to compliment an article must tie up with its contents. They must be
together as one unit.
 A picture must have a caption (Also called a cutline) summarizing the "story" the picture
tells.

The Guidelines for News Editor

 Infer the characteristics of a News stories you selected. Analyze each story by answering
the following questions:
 Is the news based on actual persons, occurrences, situations and ideas?
 It is interesting, in what way?
 Is it interesting to a few or greater number of readers?
 Does it inform? Explain.
 It is accurate? Biased?
 It is concise and clear?
 Is it timely or recent? Present your findings

Principles of clear and effective writing

 Think first, and then write.
 Get to the point.
 Use familiar words.
 Omit verbal Deadwood.
 Keep sentences short.
 Shorten paragraphs.
 Use specific, concrete language.
 Prefer the simple to the complex.
 Be positive.
 Use the active voice.
 Use adjective sparingly.
 Revise and sharpen.
 Write to express not to impress.

The Guidelines for Sports Editor

Analyze each one by answering these questions
1. What is the main theme or idea? Is it Significant?
2. What Lead is used?
3. What is the message to the readers? What is its purpose? In what way does the writer
achieve this?
4. What source / authorities do the writers cite? Share your findings.

Note: Take note of the events covered and performance of your school teams.
Interview the players, coaches or trainers, about their views on the team's performance.
Based on the data, write a sports editorial boosting about the morale of the school teams.

The Sports writer must possess these following:

 Interest in all sports events.
 Knowledge of rules and regulations covering all sports events.
 Knowledge of the language or jargon of all sports events.

The Guidelines for Feature Editor

 Go over the sample articles.
 Prepare your analysis for the following questions:
 What makes the subject matter interesting?
 What kind of lead does the story use? Is it appropriate to the subject matter?
 In what way is the body developed?
 Is the length of the article sufficient to the subject matter? Did the writers give too
much or little information?
 What information was not necessary? Which ones were necessary?

Note: Identify and list down the points which you think should be highlighted or downplayed,
included or deleted, to suit the needs of your paper and your reader’s interests. Rewrite and
acknowledged the original work by giving the title and author.

Section Editors Suggestions on how one can be a good critic:

 Be competent reviewers
 Keep on studying
 Write reviews.
 Plan and start with good leads.
 Compare only the comparable and be fair to the subject matter.
 Set realistic standards or parameters. Write well.

Guidelines for section Editors

 Double check all names, titles / designations and names of offices.
 Simplify the language.
 Make the language brisk by making the sentences short and lively.
 Cut out dead phrases, useless words, dull verbs and needless details.
 Cross out doubtful facts especially those that take time to verify.
 Don’t trust memory, always check records.
 Be on the outlook for personal prejudices and biases.
 Make each copy fair, tasteful, readable and neat.
 Check euphemisms
 Block-off clichés.
 Check grammar and usage then rewrite.
Note: The Section Editors through assigned in different areas, have basically the following
tasks.
 Plan issues ahead with the staff
 Schedule significant stories for each issue with the staff
 Assigned stories to reporters
 Give reporters tips on how to get certain stories
 Edit the c to make them clear and readable
 Search for errors and make the necessary corrections
 Layout page /s
 Supervise printing

The Guidelines for Literary Editor

A literary editor is a specialist whose duties include providing the quality of the materials
prepared for print on the highest linguistic and informative levels. Usually, the original text is
far from being perfect, comprising numerous mistakes, inconsistencies, unclear places, and so
on. Since all this requires correction, each publishing house and/or website hire literary editors.

Duties of Literary Editor

One of the main responsibilities of a literary editor is correcting grammar, stylistic, punctuation,
syntax, and other errors, typos, tautologies.

A literary editor keeps track on the condition of the so called editorial portfolio. Usually it is a
document, which contains information about the originals of authors’ manuscripts submitted to
the publishing house and approved for publication; mainly, the information about authors, their
works, and the amount of symbols in them is inserted in a special file.
The record of the amount of symbols is counted in author’s sheet: one such sheet consists of 40
000 symbols with spaces, and depending on the number of these sheets a type of a manuscript
is defined; for example, a regular novel starts with five author’s sheets.

A literary editor must attend meetings with a chief editor. These meetings are needed for
discussing further short term perspective plans of a publishing house: searching for the new
authors: approving their manuscripts for publication: deciding on the number of copies of a
book, magazine, or a newspaper; establishing the sum of authors’ honorariums, and so on.

A literary editor performs several organizational functions; for instance he\she creates thematic
plans of publications to be released in the nearest future, and controls their execution. In case
of a periodical, a literary editor must develop the conceptions of the new rubrics and introduce
them to the editorial team.

A literary editor supervises a team of regular editors, whose main duty is to perform the initial
editing and proofreading of a text: correcting the most obvious mistakes and typos.

A literary editor often cooperates with authors, when it comes to editing the source text; for
example, if there is a need to correct storyline inconsistencies, rename a novel’s characters,
change some details of a plot – all these questions a literary editor often discusses with the
author of a text. Due to literary editors’ work readers can freely enjoy novels, or retrieve
business and/or entertaining information they require, without stumbling upon mistakes and
feeling confused because of an inconsistently presented material.

Prepared by: Ms. Angelica E. Butalid

Editor in Chief