Megan Lynch

Dr. Daniel Vollaro

Editorial Portfolio

7-15-2011

1-2, Abi Adegunwa- Story 3

Most of my comments for Abi’s work had to do with grammatical issues such as subject/verb

agreement, concision and punctuation. Because she wrote about Government bailouts and a lot

of financial stuff, I was not able to help her with the context of her article. I asked another editor

to read it and help with clarity on that part, while I focused my energy on making Abi’s article

more clear for her readers.

The changes I made on Abi’s piece were changing punctuation and grammar errors. I found that

as a writer, she struggles mostly with clarity and the AP Style of writing. I deleted a few words

and changed a few words to make her piece more concise and clear, as well as fixed minor style

errors.

3-4, Angel Paschal- Story 3

While editing Angel’s third story, I found that she tends to write as one would think: stream-of-

consciousness. This is not the most professional way of writing, so I used my comments to help

point her in the correct direction in both word-choice and punctuation. I helped her to correct her

problems in writing by telling her the rules of the AP Style of writing and pointing out where she

needed work and giving her different variations of clear, concise writing.

For the most part in Angel’s article, I changed grammar and punctuation errors. I also moved

around some words that sounded awkward and deleted others that were not needed, for concision

purposes.

5-6, Abby Vaughn- Story 3

In this article, Abby was concerned about how it sounded/read as an essay. I gave her comments

about how to fix that and how to break up paragraphs so that it could read less like an essay and

flow more like a news article.

As Abby did not have a lot of grammatical errors, I mainly commented on how she could make

her piece better. There were only one or two places where her work needed a word taken out or

added, or grammar corrections. I also broke up a few paragraphs to make it read and look less

like an essay, as Abby was concerned about that.

7-8, Rachel Compton- Story 3

For this version of Rachel’s third story, I commented on how she could make the style and flow

better and pointed out a few mistakes where she spelled a name two different ways. She found

this helpful, as she had over-looked the error.

As far as mistakes go, Rachel seems to understand the AP style and spelling and the flow of a

news article. There were not many errors to change in her piece.

9-10, Blair Sanders- Story 3

While there were a lot of comments I made on Blair’s first story about writing in the AP style,

she learned fast and did not repeat her mistakes. In this article, I made a few comments on how

Blair could better her writing style.

While editing Blair’s pieces, I found that she has a talent for writing news articles. She took to

AP Style nicely, and as such, I did not need to edit a lot. For the most part, I only needed to take

out a few words for concision purposes.

Class Collaboration

Our class, especially the editorial teams, worked hard together throughout the semester to ready

many articles for publication. Our Editor-in-Chief Erin Corrigan-Smith, along with the News

Editor Michael Lee and the Features Editor Stephanie Briarton, worked hard with the class both

together and individually to make sure that everyone understood what was being asked of them

and that they succeeded in learning about journalism and news writing through this class.

Near the beginning of the semester, the Copy-Editors collaborated to put together an AP Style

Guide for the rest of the class. As a group, we decided which rules were the most important, and

we put those together in a Google Document. Once we shared this with the class, the class’

writing became a lot more professional and followed the rules we placed before them.

During the course of the class, the Copy-Editors worked together on multiple articles, bouncing

ideas off each other openly and without offense. We used the comment feature on Google Docs

to work together on making articles better and the chat feature to speak with each other over the

internet outside of class. We listened to what each other had to say about style and flow, and we

helped each other clarify on AP Style rules.

When I was unable to completely understand and edit the context of one article, Erin and

Michael were there to help me edit. They helped the writer clarify about the economic downturn

while I do not understand the economy. They stepped up to the plate when I was not able to.

Overall, I feel privileged to have been a part of this team. I learned a lot about teamwork through

this experience, and I learned that it is ok to trust others with my writing. I received a lot of

constructive criticism on my writing style and grew in my understanding of what a well-rounded

writer should be. Thank you for this opportunity.