Most journalists know the importance of creating a sense of balance in their stories, but it’s not just enough to get quotes from both sides of a particular issue (assuming there are only two sides.) Journalists may be unaware of the bias their stories create based on the involvement and expertise of the sources they choose to quote.

Photo Credit: sskennel, Flickr.

One way to evaluate your coverage’s balance is to sort sources using the following chart:

You should make one chart for the first side of the issue listing your sources names, and one chart for the other side of the issue. Look for disparities between the sides. If you favor one kind of source on one side but not the other, then your story is imbalanced and subject to valid accusations of bias, even if the discrepancy was unintentional or situational.

For some stories this will be more problematic than others, in the eyes of readers. Most people don’t get too riled up over things like the water board or tort reform, but almost everyone has a deeply emotional connection to their stance on abortion rights. And you may be surprised to  find what issues people do get riled up about; transportation and land use issues seem dry and uninteresting, even if they are clearly important to the public. But you can never tell when such issues will inspire passionate activism; even if they don’t, there are usually advocates deeply invested in the outcomes of such issues who rightly demand evenhanded coverage, no matter how niche the issue may be. It’s best to aim for balance as a default.

Let’s use the example of abortion rights, which will crystallize the potential problem a bit.

You’re covering a planned protest outside a local reproductive health clinic. You attend and interview the protesters, staff at the clinic, clinic patrons, counter-protesters, the head of the national abortion rights advocacy organization who did not attend the protest, the pastor of a megachurch in the neighboring county who supported but did not attend the protest, a doctor who supports abortion rights but does not perform abortions, a doctor who opposes abortion rights, and a med student and researcher who provides clinical definitions and explanations.

All of these people could be sorted into various categories above. But what if you quote five different staff at the clinic as well as a clinic patron, but only two protesters? What if the protesters you quote are both new to the movement, but the counter-protesters you quote have been organizing for years? What if you choose not to include scientific arguments made by the doctor who opposes abortion rights, and only included quotes about his or her faith and conscience?

Then you would be (rightfully) accused of producing a story with a pro-abortion-rights, anti-abortion-opposition bias. Which you may not have intended, and perhaps is the opposite of your personal beliefs (which happens when you overcompensate for what you know your bias is.)

This is a much more methodological way of evaluating the bias of a story. Use it when brainstorming source ideas, and when evaluating the finished product.

I am constantly surprised to see some of the stories that my fellow journalism students turn in, both for school and for publication in the the campus newspaper. Many of them are riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, or are overflowing with word fluff — that indirect way of writing that uses unnecessary words to up the word count. Many students don’t try to fix this until professors promise to dock 5 points for every error or unnecessary word.

Photo Credit: Eli_Reusch, Flickr.

I’ve heard students say that docking so many points (usually assignments are only worth 20) is too harsh, or that the “little” errors shouldn’t matter so much, or that it’s obvious what they were trying to say or the equivalent of “That’s what copy editors are for.” None of which is true.

Your story’s grammar matters.  Every error you make undermines your credibility — which is a fancy and polite way of saying that you look stupid and you make the paper look stupid. Readers will let you know it, too; I’ve gotten plenty of angry letters to the editor that say just that. “Are you stupid? I can’t believe you have the gall to call yourself a journalism student. You shouldn’t even be in college if you write a sentence like ‘The mothers asks from information.’ I’m appalled that my tax dollars are paying for your education, which is clearly a waste.”

Is this harsh? Maybe, but it isn’t just coming from exasperated professors and enraged copy editors. This is coming from readers in the general public, and they certainly have a point. Grammar mistakes — especially ones so basic as subject-verb agreement and the difference between “from” and “for” — make you look like an uneducated and careless writer, someone who isn’t particularly motivated by his or her job. You become someone who isn’t even striving for bland acceptability, much less excellence.

Such errors are easy enough to explain: it’s possible that the extra “s” was a simple typo, easy to do when you’re typing quickly, and that the “from” was really a misspelled “for” (or “fro”) that was automatically corrected by your word processing program. But that doesn’t matter, as far as readers and editors are concerned.  Either you are uneducated and unable to catch such mistakes — in which case you need to seriously re-evaluate your career choice or spend some time with a tutor — or you are lazy and didn’t do even a cursory re-read before you submitted the piece. Neither option is a good representation of you or your skills. This isn’t high school, where a C is average and a D means diploma.

True, everyone is human, and everyone makes mistakes, but they should be rare. The number of mistakes in a submitted piece directly reflect the amount of time and care you took when you wrote the piece in the first place…and the amount of time and care you took to edit it after writing it.

Your story’s word fluff matters too. Fluffy writing is boring writing. We all know it when we see it…and college students, especially, are extremely talented at using “fluffy” writing to extend a four-page paper to a required five pages.In journalism, length should always be trimmed as much as possible.

“The utilization of Lamaze, or other controlled-breathing techniques, may ameliorate the stress, anxiety and internal mental pressure that often occurs when one is in the process of beginning to give birth to an infant for the first time.”

Be honest. Gauge the fluffiness of your writing. Ask yourself: “Would I fall asleep reading this?” Many students admit, once they review their work more critically, that no, they wouldn’t want to read this. If you wouldn’t want to read it, no one else will want to either. Especially when you could have written:

“Breathing techniques, such as Lamaze, may help relieve the stress and pain that comes with labor.”

Finitely shorter — 16 words compared to 39 — and infinitely more interesting. Even if readers aren’t interested in Lamaze — hey, the sentence was over quickly, and they can move on.

Every error you make, every passive, verbose, “fluffy” sentence that you write, is one more thing for a copy editor to fix. A good editor can cut the word count of a story by 15 to 20 percent. If an editor is cutting more than that, it’s because you aren’t writing well. The more a copy editor has to fix, the more metaphorical balls he or she has to juggle, the more likely he or she is to miss something. I have no problem finding and fixing three errors in a well-written article or column. I have a serious problem having to rewrite every passive sentence, cut word fluff, fact check, grammar check, and move paragraphs around to achieve a more appropriate flow. There are more likely to be errors remaining undetected in the latter than the former.

Readers (and editors, and professors) judge you when you use bad grammar. They all judge when your submitted piece looks like you churned it out in 20 minutes without a cursory re-read, or when, to all appearances, you are elevating the word count with fluff instead of adding content.

I will address more specific grammar errors, and why certain kinds are hard to catch, regularly on Wednesdays, as well as the occasional tip on how to eliminate word fluff and make your writing more interesting. Until then, if you just start doing 10 minutes of editing before submitting work, I will be content.

[I would like to thank Mr. Peterson, my high school freshman honors English teacher, who's clever alliteration, "D means diploma!" inspired so many of us to strive for excellence.]

Ever have a web site with some great information on it, that you would like to use, track or confirm, but the site’s author is anonymous or uses a pseudonym? Perhaps the contact form doesn’t work, or you have tried it and gotten no response, or there is no contact system provided at all. One way you can start the process of researching the author is by doing a WHOIS search on the domain name.

When you register a domain, such as yourname.com or bigcompany.org, you have to pay a registrar and provide certain basic contact information. This information exists in publicly accessible domain name registry databases, and if you enter the name, you should get at least one set (and possibly a series) of names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. You should also get the information about domain name registration company itself; which company it is (such as GoDaddy.com or DreamHost), and all of their contact information.  Obviously, the contact information and location of the registrar will be completely different than that of the actual web site owner. The contacts may be different for owners, technical assistance, billing, etc. This is a starting point that you can use to continue an investigation.

For one thing, you can use this to fact-check. The author who identifies him- or herself on the site may be claiming they live in a certain state, for example, but the domain is registered to an address in another state. This is a discrepancy that can, and should, be investigated. Keep in mind that the domain name owner and the author of the web site content may not be the same person, but it’s a rare situation when someone lets another person use their web property without knowing who that other person is. So at the very least, the address, phone number, and email provided should lead you to a connection to the author…perhaps the domain was purchased and registered by a friend, colleague or family member. It can also give you a name when a site is anonymous, or one of the key players when it’s a group site.

Be aware that some registrars offer “masking” as part of their services, which means that the names and contact info will be the registrar’s info instead. So instead of the following entry:

Name: Ruthie Kelly
Address: 123 Main Street, San Diego, CA 92071
Phone: (619)630-7285
Email address: ruthie@ruthiekelly.com

You may find an entry like this:

Name: ruthiekelly.com  NameHost registrant
Address: c/o NameHost, 456 Wall Street, Beverly Hills, CA 92010
Phone: (424) 123-4568
Email address: ruthiekelly.com@namehost.com

The reasons that registrars are allowed to do this is because they must have the registrant’s information on file and forward all inquiries to the registrant. Any mail sent to “ruthiekelly.com, c/o Namehost, 456 Wall Street, Beverly Hills, CA 92010″ will be forwarded to my “real” address, listed above, and any email sent to ruthiekelly.com@namehost.com will forward to my real email address. So anything sent through these channels is supposed to get through…eventually. Since registrars have to have semi-adequate information on file, for billing purposes at the very least, you can be assured that they have this information. You can always use as many channels as possible to get whatever message you are trying to get through.

Obviously, I would recommend not “spamming” someone with requests. This is a tool, a piece of your puzzle, and should not be viewed as the only means to your end. Do not plan to depend on it, because at the end of the day, you can send as many letters and messages as you want…but they can ignore them all.

There are quite a few different WHOIS services that allow you to look up this information for free. I usually use Network Solutions’ WHOIS, the screenshot of which is shown above. There are a variety of WHOIS services, and you can find more through Google, Yahoo, or your favorite search engine.