The reporter vs. the editor

The transition from writing to polishing, revising and pitching.

Jun 14, 2025

First week at the Daily Mail in the 📚 …

… I learned we don’t capitalize the t …

To Read 📮 In The Mail 🔻

It’s just after 9 a.m. on Friday the 13th, the fifth day in my transition from reporter to editor. With the world peering at the prospect of WWIII — (what kind of conflict would qualify for such a designation I wonder?) — I’d usually be responsible for owning a *single* story about the implications of Israel’s pugnacious bombardment of Iran. In this new role, I instead hold partial ownership over at least half a dozen. The biggest takeaway of my first week as deputy politics editor is that as a writer, there’s always a finality to publishing a piece — your piece, your precious baby — that allows you a moment to exhale, reflect and regroup before the next idea sprouts. As an editor, there’s no rest even when weary. There’s always another story that needs to be revised, shaped, planned or nudged along; updates are ceaseless, the lists of to-dos rolling. Someone else just tweeted. Update needed. Planning docs with future pitches are eternal. What’s next?, one of my Politico editors would ask me soon after filing, even when I looked exhausted and felt defeated by the day.

I’ve avoided that tic thus far.

Breathe…

As a reporter, you camp out in your inbox and on your phone; as an editor you live in Slack, dwelling in customized silos of editors and reporters and video, pictures and SEO specialists, live blog launchers, tech fixers and faceless overnight colleagues in New York and London who you’ll probably never lay a human eye on (but should cozy up to if you want a story higher on the homepage.) You wait for an unexpected message from a higher up attempting to empower you: ‘What do you think of XXX?’ Does it matter? I agree. We should pursue XXX. :(

As a reporter, you devote much of your brain blood and grit to the lede — the opening lines, the first crucial paragraphs, which quote to feature highest and precisely how high. As an editor, it’s headline or die. But make sure you run it through SEO first. What’s trending at noon may be scrollable by 3. If it isn’t headed correctly, it has no chance, the writing doesn’t matter. The HEAD drives all, even if obnoxiously it requires ALL CAPS without commas.

Instead of perfecting your own voice, the editor’s job is to channel another’s, which inevitably involves difficult choices on how much to shave off or spruce up any particular sentence and how many words to exchange in your brain’s thesaurus. This isn’t your byline, but you are the ultimate gatekeeper of the prose that flattens the page. Do you employ a scalpel, gently and sparingly, or do opt for a bone saw for extensive reconstructive surgery? And most significantly, how does the reporter react to change? This is where conversations are important, imperative. An editor should want to chat with you frequently, exhibit camaraderie, not friendship. An editor is not your friend, he is your mother — guiding you and wanting your best, but not believing you’re cool or interesting. That’s for others. Still, while a reporter can unleash without a whim an editor must stay focused and disciplined on a core question: What new information is the reporter trying to convey and how can I make it easier to understand?

I’ve always been sensitive about and protective of my copy — you should be, it’s your home recipe with that you built from scratch. I’m mindful of this sentiment so my initial approach has been to handle words delicately, to select my changes judiciously. Except for quotes. Quotes must be pared down or detonated altogether. Most are too long. Many are unnecessary. Quotes should be used like salt on a hamburger or hot sauce on ice cream. They are a writer’s crutch when one needs to fill space and achieve some sort of arbitrary word count from the foolish lesson given to us in high school. I know this because I’ve done it. Here, I’ll do it right now.

“The editor as a type often gels into a grating, obtrusive aggrandizer. Much like vegans and guys who’ve gone to prison, you don’t have to ask if someone’s an editor, they’ll be sure to let you know, repeatedly.”

— Caleb Caudell

This doesn’t exactly make my point. This is a substantial quote I came upon and included I wanted to gently mock the esteem around the title I now carry. Being an editor means more power over everything but less ownership over one thing you can truly call yours. Being an editor means being selfless, while also checking yourself with humility and realizing your impulse may not always be the right one. Even if you carry years more experience or have written hundreds of more stories and headlines. Sometimes the 25-year-old in the office is more right than the 46-year-old. But neither of them is as right as much as the SEO geeks in New York.

“Often the standards in our chosen medium are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. They are Invisible and un-questioned. This makes it nearly impossible to think outside the standard paradigm.”

—Rick Rubin

Being an editor is acting as a skeptic. Poking holes in pronouncements. Probing for why we should believe X. Asking for more. I grew up in a household where my father would read two New Jersey newspapers front to back from his living room recliner in the morning and evenings and scream the most delightful findings or complaints to my mother. Being editor is anticipating the golden nuggets that folks will howl about in an article and making sure they are higher in the copy. It also means anticipating what my father would render as … bullshit … in the prose and extricating it altogether or refining it to make it defensible. After all, no matter how perfectly composed, a critic somewhere will find a problem with it.

Being an editor means knowing you won’t satisfy everyone. Dissent is part of the point of media.

You just have to be able to live with yourself — and know that the best editors were reporters. Obviously.

Too Close To Call

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