Co-bylines

double bylines are fine and necessary when two reporters contribute heavily to the info, or if one contributes the most important info. there are also times. mostly goneby times on news side, when one reporter literally phones -- or today emails or texts -- the info into a rewriteman. in this case, the legman gets the first credit, writer the second.

what i DO NOT condone is some joints putting two or especially more than two bylines on a story of, say, three or four graphs. sheesh. the n.y. tabs are guilty of this more than most.

in today's investigative world, it seems as if a separate box or a tagline is used to list all those who "contributed" to the piece. in that case, i believe anything more than two bylines is just silly.

eff the clips. if you contributed mightily to the piece just explain that in your cover letter or during your interview.

 

Co-bylines if more than one writer substantially contributed to (i.e., actually wrote sections of) the story.

"Contributed to" if additional writers contributed background material, quotes, stats, etc.

If you get to the point where more than two staffers can legitimately be credited as "writers," you probably should be thinking real hard of breaking the story up into sections -- mainbar, sidebar, etc.

 

I've never had any issue with them. Sometimes, I get a bunch of important material, a colleague gets a bunch of material, and we cobble it together. It would be unfair to one of us to have a solo byline and a "reporting contributed by" for the other one. No issue.