Co-bylines

Woodward and Bernstein disagree.

 

Well, that was 35 years ago. And with far bigger ramifications than whether some overpaid overvalued blockhead was injected in the ass with steroids.

All things being equal, if Watergate happened now, it would not break in newsprint. It might be in a million bits and pieces across the blogosphere, or twittered to death.

 

But where else is someone going to be able to get all those pieces, and then some, in one credible place?
/idealist'd

 

Some readers do follow specific writers/reporters. Before I broke into the biz, I knew if it had Rick Reilly on the front, it'd be worth my time. That was back when he was a must read.

 

Agree, I think the loyal readers do care if a particular writer has the byline on a story. For example, if Peter Gammons writes a Red Sox story, I think Sox fans and baseball loyalists will read it without thinking twice, whereas they might not care so much if there's a specific "Boston Globe staff" attribution or something to that effect.

 

I've seen a lot of articles in the Times where at the end, it will say something like, "additional reporting by John Q. Public in Washington, DC."

I think this makes sense for a story that may have elements of it breaking in various places. But the reader still knows who did the main reporting and who wrote it up.

I'm not sure how the work is divided in a co-bylined story.

 

I don't know how many readers would care to look at this, but you could post something on a newspaper blog or something else like twitter online saying who did what in the article if it's that important.

 

Posts here make me wonder: Do copy editors like or dislike bylines for writers? A lot of times, the copy editor saves the writer's ass on some key point but remains anonymous to the readers. Other times, a copy editor contributes more to the final version than another writer who ends up with a co-byline. And the comment above about using stories for clips suggests that maybe there is a little resentment.

I've heard people in this biz suggest that every story of significant length carry a tagline like "Edited by..." much the way it could have "Additional reporting by..." Would that appeal to people in this business, whether writers or copy editors?

BTW, I wasn't thinking of a "clips" situation at all when I started the thread. But I suppose this would explain sending a job interviewee unexpectedly to cover a game, so you could see his/her raw copy, judge how they are on deadline -- and see how they are when they fly solo. [/crossthreading]

 

1. I agree with Sp0rtScribe that depending on the byline, readers might care very much.

2. With regard to Joe's question, I've actually seen a paper or site that carried the "edited by" line, I'm positive. I just can't remember where.

3. To me, this is almost like the "who cares about who breaks stories anymore" argument. Not every single thing we do has to be solely for the readers. Some of what we do is part of the profession, and the pride of having your name on a story still is part of this.

4. And yes, there's a "who's ass is on the line for what's written?" aspect to the byline, too.

5. I've only been bothered by multiple bylines typographically if it gets to be too much. Never worried me much beyond that. The cleanest look is a byline and then the contributeds at the bottom. But by god, if two people split the difference between the work -- maybe one did most of the reporting, but the other krafted the story -- then I have no problem with a double byline.

 

Are we really debating the existence of bylines? Does any newspaper not use them? It tells you who wrote the story. Are we that tight for space?

Do they suck for readers? Are there really readers who start reading a story and can't make it through the byline? That's either a long-ass name or some serious attention-span issues from the reader.

There are writers at my paper who gripe about getting a tagline vs. a double-byline when they contribute to a story. Only time I think it gets clunky is when a major story breaks during the day and you see a 1A story with three or four writers in the byline -- we need to go ahead and break that tie a little bit.

But if two writers both contribute significantly to a story, we've got to be able to share a little better ...

 

As a copy editor, I have no problem toiling in anonymity. I'm not looking for public recognition. If I were, I wouldn't have gotten into copy editing.

 

I've had plenty of co-bylined stories. It never really bothered me as a writer, especially since I truly felt in each of those times that we had done equal amounts of work.

But I can remember reading the Chicago Tribune at times during college and seeing literally four or five names on a byline, along with a couple more names listed at the bottom as having done additional reporting. Does the Tribune even have eight or nine reporters in the newsroom now?