SO YOU WANT TO EDIT FOR THE SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Welcome!

The South Side Weekly is a nonprofit newsroom that covers arts, culture, and politics on the South Side of Chicago, with a circulation of around 10,000 print copies. We publish coverage of local artists and arts events, as well as reporting in the public interest on subjects such as education, development, policing, and food; we also publish personal essays, poetry, and visual art. 

Originally started as an alternative student newspaper at the University of Chicago, the Weekly became independent of the University in 2013. Our office is now located at the Experimental Station, in the Woodlawn neighborhood. 

The Weekly is written, produced, and edited by a staff of almost all volunteers. We seek and publish contributions from writers and artists across the city.

1. Here’s what you need to know first

Since our writers have a variety of skill levels, and since the Weekly is a paper committed not just to publishing journalism but to teaching it, the Weekly’s editorial process is extremely thorough. All editing is meant not only to improve pieces but also to teach the writer about how to report and craft a story. Ideally, editing should not feel like being nitpicked but should feel like a constructive and even fun way to engage with the content of a story, with an end result that a writer can ultimately be very proud of.

All articles go through three rounds of editing with three different editors before they are laid out in the print edition of the paper and uploaded to the website. As an incoming contributing editor, you’ll get started by taking seconds or thirds on a story. You will not be expected to take primary edits.

Primary Editor
The primary editor is the main editor assigned to a piece and is responsible not only for editing the writer’s first draft but also for guiding the writer through the reporting and writing process. The primary editor is also responsible for serving as the point of contact for the story for the managing editor and editor-in-chief, who will be checking in regularly. It is frequently necessary for the primary editor and the writer to go back and forth with edits twice or three times on the first draft of a piece if the writer needs to do more reporting or to rewrite portions of the piece.

The first round of edits, completed by the primary editor, focuses on content, structure, and language. For example, the primary editor might cut sections from the piece, make suggestions to restructure the piece, ask the writer to write a more engaging lead, ask the writer to get another quotation or interview for the piece, fix awkward sentences, etc. (The writer is always welcome to ask questions or express disagreement with edits.)

Seconds Editor
The seconds editor also completes a thorough edit, looking at flow, tone and any holes in the piece, leaving comments and suggestions for the primary editor. The seconds editor should feel empowered to suggest changes to the story, time allowing. All edits will be made in “suggesting mode” in the same Google Doc. After you have completed your edit, it is sent back to the primary editor. The primary editor’s responsibility here is to approve all suggested edits or otherwise come to a resolution with the seconds editor about edits they disagree with. If the editors cannot come to an agreement about a specific edit, it will be resolved by the managing editor. It is the primary editor’s responsibility to keep the writer informed of any significant changes that are being made or need to be made to the story; seconds editors should feel empowered to ask for additional reporting, writing, or research in a story, within reason, or to suggest a story be pushed to the editor-in-chief and managing editor, again within reason. Writers should not approve secondary edits, though they may comment or respond if they have relevant information. After seconds edits are complete, that should be reflected in the name of the Google Doc and the flow, and that version should be saved as “Secondary Edits."

The document should again be clean and not have any suggested edits or comments. If the fact-check has not been implemented by this point, it cannot be sent to thirds. Any significant changes that are implemented as a result of the fact-check have to also be approved by the seconds editor.

When the seconds edit is finished and edits are resolved, the primary editor should notify the Slack channel that the piece is ready for thirds.

Thirds Editor
The thirds editor focuses more on grammar and style and catching last-minute mistakes. Thirds edits will occur during Production Night and will be confined to spelling, grammar, copy, style, syntax, and making sure stories have all required elements (e.g., italics, author bios). After a thirds editor has completed their edits, they will integrate their edits directly into the Google Doc. If the thirds editor has any edits they feel should be made that are not confined to spelling, grammar, copy, etc., they will notify the managing editor or the primary editor on the story, who will make a decision on any suggested edits beyond that scope. After the thirds edits have been integrated into the Google Doc, that will be reflected in its name by adding “FINAL” to the end of the file name. This will be what is printed in the paper, barring any cuts made for space.

2. Watch this video for a more thorough overview of our editing process

3. Get familiar with the South Side Weekly stylebook

The stylebook is meant to be a resource that you can consult whenever a style question arises. It’s arranged in alphabetical order and draws heavily from The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, and Garner’s Modern American Usage.

For questions of spelling and hyphenation, use the primary entries—not the variant spellings—in Webster’s. (The online version, m-w.com, is the Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.) 

Use the Oxford English Dictionary if you have further questions regarding definitions. 

Consult Garner’s Modern American Usage for additional questions of grammar and usage. Last, check nytimes.com.

4. Learn the key article elements

These are the key elements needed to publish and promote each South Side Weekly story in print and online aside from the draft itself. All of these should be filled out with at least a draft answer—the headline doesn’t need to be totally final—when the story is sent to seconds.

Hed (headline):
Dek (subhead):
Web hed (version of headline for online; requires dek, so note clearly if different than print dek):  
Byline (writer’s name):
Pull quotation(s) (line pulled out of story in large font; 1-2 sentences. If it’s a quotation, make sure it’s attributed.):
Index line (excerpt from story used as italicized line in table of contents on page 3, which should give a good sense of what the story is about. 30-75 characters, sometimes can be pushed to 100. Occasionally can be same as the dek, particularly for newsy stories.):
Section (section label for print edition, which can match the section options on our website or sometimes may be more specific, such as “Justice”):
Art credit (who illustrated which images? Who took which photos?): 
Photo captions (description of photo contents that make their relevance to the story clear; be sure to make clear which captions correspond to which photos):
Neighborhood(s) (any neighborhoods meaningfully included in the story, to help us track the distribution of our coverage):
Author bio (two- to three-sentence bio including writer’s position at the Weekly, any important affiliations or other description of writer’s work, and a mention of the last piece the writer wrote for the Weekly (“[Name] last wrote for the Weekly about [topic].”) (For new writers, the final sentence should say, “This is [Name]’s first piece for the Weekly.”): 
Social media:
Author social media:
Visuals contributor social media:
Nut graf (what’s the point of the story? Why does a reader care? The nut graf is a paragraph early on in the story that answers those questions in a nutshell.):

5. Consult the checklist

This is a non-comprehensive list of things you should be looking out for:

• Straight quotation marks or apostrophes (replace with curly versions)

• Double punctuation marks (commas, periods, etc.)

• Double spaces

• Lingering HTML tags for formatting (<i>, </i>)

• Misspelled words (especially names)

• Obvious errors or typos

• Nonsensical, unclear, confusing sentences

• Awkward phrasing, repetitive or redundant clauses

• Abrupt cutoffs (parts of story could be missing)

6. Join the Weekly’s Slack channel

The Weekly’s editing process takes place via Slack and Google Drive. We use the #production-night channel for all communication around edits. If you have not been added already, you can set up an account and join our channel with this link.

Below is a screenshot of a typical Slack exchange:

When a story is ready for seconds or thirds edits, the primary editor with send a message to the channel by using “@channel” and pasting the Google Drive link to the story. Whoever is available and interested will claim the assignment by responding in the thread.

For more information about how to use Slack, review our Slack guide.

7. Additional Resources

• Editors Guide

• Writers Guide

• Fact-checking Guide

• Basic FOIA and Chicago data source resources

• Pitching Guide

8. Editor Office House

Have additional questions or want to workshop a pitch with an editor? Use this link to schedule a time to meet with an editor during their weekly office hours. (Currently done via Google meet)