By Allan
R. Andrews, Editor,
Pacific Stars and Stripes, Tokyo, Japan
A friend recently shared with me some of his favorite quotations from a book of cowboy philosophy.
One of them struck me as keenly addressed to the work that editors do each day: "Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."
This is the season that editors get to judge -- or rejudge -- many of the decisions about news they've made throughout the year.
A variety of news organizations, the Associated Press being chief among them, have begun polling editors around the world to determine the top story of 1997.
From lists of several hundred stories that have made page one news during 1997, editors are asked to rank the top ten stories. Before year's end, similar polls will rank the top sports stories, the top U.S. stories, the top business stories, the top religious stories, the top entertainment stories, and so on.
As I ponder AP's list, the cowboy philosopher's words haunt me.
When someone asks me what I do as an editor, my stock answer is: "I make judgments."
This is true for everyone who assumes the role of editing for publication someone else's writing.
Each day a copy editor is faced with page after page of words that must be made to fit neatly and properly into a space assigned by another editor. The words selected to remain for publication involve the making of hundreds of judgments.
Similarly, the editor who assigned the space in the newspaper is faced with hundreds of choices of stories to place in that space. Again, the stories selected for inclusion in the newspaper involve making several judgments.
Even the reporter, if I can step back in the process, makes hundreds of judgments in producing the news. In the process of interviewing, gathering information and selecting sentences to narrate the story, the reporter makes hundreds of tiny decisions that determine the outcome of the news.
Frankly, editors and reporters often make bad judgments.
What makes good reporters and good editors is an inexplicable skill at making "good news judgments," and I don't think there's a news person alive who would disagree with the cowboy philosopher that experience is what leads to making good judgments and that one gains experience by suffering through several bad judgments.
Making these kinds of judgments is a bit like gathering wisdom; it's something most accomplish later in life, which is why top editors are typically aging and gray-haired. They got to the top by suffering through lots of bad judgments and learning from them.
So each year editors get a chance to review the judgments they've made during the year and once again judge what should be considered the top story.
Let me give a few examples of what makes this a difficult choice.
The death of Princess Diana jumps out as the top story of the year, mostly because of its emotional impact on the world. On a rating scale of one to ten regarding total impact on human events, however, this sad and tragic story doesn't get top ranking.
At the opposite end of the list, the world economy story detailing the staggering and consistent performance of the U.S. stock markets and the equally staggering and dismal performance of the financial markets in other countries, particularly in the Far East, doesn't leap out as a top story. Yet, in terms of impact on human events, this story ranks near the top.
In making these picks for top stories, time and distance are often influential factors. The long siege of the Japanese ambassador's home in Peru was a compelling and dramatic story in February?, but from the distance of December it seems less compelling.
Sometimes a small story with little immediate impact proves to be the biggest story of its time. Could this be the case with our probing of the universe? Have we discovered something that will change our lives forever?
How important and compelling is the story of the death and funeral of a nun who gave her life to charity and helping others, or the story of an obscure Vermont woman awarded a prestigious peace prize for championing a cause on which her own country's leaders hedge their bets?
How important is the surge of court decisions that may have changed forever our view of criminal and civil litigation or altered the manner in which we view au pairs or persons with same-sex preferences?
How important is the U.S. decision to send its young men to maintain peace in far-flung regions like Bosnia and Saudi Arabia, or to maintain its presence on the border that separates a starving North Korea from a financially floundering South Korea?
In attempting to answer some of these questions by judging what's news, editors will make some bad decisions, and, it is hoped, by living through some of these bad decisions they will become better editors.
I view these year-end polls to determine the top story as a healthy exercise that provides editors with a chance to reflect on what they've done and thought through the year; a chance to reexamine judgments -- and learn, even if it's after-the-fact.
In a fun way, it gives us a chance to dismiss items we once thought so important and be surprised by some we dismissed as unimportant. In many cases, we discover we have been squatting on our spurs.
By the way, the cowboy philosopher is named Texas Bix Bender, and his book is called "Don't Squat With Yer Spurs On: A Cowboy's Guide To Life."
I wonder if he ever worked as an editor.
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