What's in a name?

December 16, 2018

In many areas of the newspaper industry, core design is now by means of template. To those not familiar with the process, in its simplest form this means a reporter fills a box on a page containing fixed shapes and formatting for all stories and captions.

Reporters haven’t been the greatest fans of this system as it can mean pointless padding or severe editing to ensure that perfect ‘copyfit’. Subs and editors have also seen it as limiting their creativity, though acknowledging what can be quite a dramatic saving in time from a freehand exercise on dozens of pages against ever stricter deadlines.

My issue, however, is with just one tiny box, often no more than one centimetre in depth – the byline box.

Whoever came up with this particular ‘must-fill’ space either had no idea on how a modern newsroom works, or a completely idealistic one.

Any dictionary definition of a byline will state, in one form or another, that a byline, usually sitting atop a story, tells you who wrote it. They grew in popularity from the 1920s, replacing the occasional ‘signature’ piece, as journalists literally started to make a name for themselves.

I began my career with the East Fife Mail in 1978 and the editor then, Ian C. Paterson, had a view on bylines quite similar to that of Adolph Ochs, owner/publisher of the New York Times – the paper was more important than the personality with the pen.

That’s not to say bylines were totally banned. They were more common on the sports lead where opinion added to the colour; this was a permitted personalisation.

The front of the paper was a different matter though, and not unique to the East Fife Mail. A byline could still appear but certain strict criteria had to be met. Firstly, it had to be an original work, from catchline to ‘ends’; it could not have appeared, or might appear, anywhere else before it was published; it had to be of community significance and worthy of the front page; it had to be well written and not have required any major sub-editing.

Meet those conditions and you might just see your name appearing alongside your work. It took me well over a year before I ticked all those boxes, and I remember the occasion vividly.

I was called through to the editor’s room where he was sitting with the chief reporter, my copy in front of them. They were concerned about one issue – the copy that I’d filed after working into the wee, small hours was a carbon; an explanation was demanded. Had I sold the story to someone else?

After explaining that my old typewriter had such heavy keys it punctured the copy paper, the only way I could file a non-perforated version was by taking a carbon.

This explanation, true but bizarre, was accepted and that Wednesday I had my first attributed front page splash. I was so excited I actually loitered next to the piles of East Fife Mails in John Menzies as readers routinely picked up their copy. Nobody asked for my autograph, but I suppose I hoped someone would recognise the local lad whose name was sitting in 18pt bold in the middle of their front page.

And that excitement has always stayed with me, and the belief that a byline needs to be earned.

But that box on templates requires filling, and while there is still the option of filing ‘Newsdesk’ instead of a name accompanied by the newspaper’s general email or Twitter account, it has now become common place for a reporter to claim that space.

Modern newsrooms, particularly in the weeklies, rely very heavily on press releases; understandably so. Yet by using that release and adding a personal byline, the definition has been changed. It no longer tells you who wrote the article but who cut and pasted it into the box.

That’s not journalism. that’s administration.

But the practise has become so widespread that the press release as a “cut and paste job” can also conceal plagiarism and copyright infringement.

Plagiarism, in my book the second most heinous journalistic sin behind fabrication, is not, I believe, actually a crime; copyright infringement is.

But the fact is someone else’s work can actually strengthen the veracity of your own. 

Attribution shows at least some semblance of research that the writer has then pulled together to present the reader with a given work. This is something children used to be taught when starting out on basic essay writing at school.

But to claim it all as your own is shameful.

I was recently working on a historical publication and a colleague flagged up a published story he’s seen that might be suitable for me to adapt, and freely available to use.

It was ideal but there was something in the copy I needed to verify, that led somewhere else, and then somewhere else, then a routine check online revealed the story was 98.5% plagiarised. But was it? Was it a press release, published earlier elsewhere? Now I’m having to work back, carefully. Attribution would not have devalued the story or its relevance, but it would have clarified its legality and authenticity. And saved me a lot of time.

It’s hard to believe over 40 years ago I had to prove my case for a byline and now it’s a box with a possible lawsuit in it.

I still can’t understand what is wrong in telling readers exactly where the information you are giving them came from?

That seems pretty basic to the profession.