Writing Tight and Editing Tighter: How to Keep Your Articles Short Enough to Get Read

Course Details

Date

March 23 - April 6, 2025

Language

English

Alternative

Modules

2

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March 23 - April 6, 2025

$0.00

Writing Tight and Editing Tighter: How to Keep Your Articles Short Enough to Get Read

Make every word count—learn to write and edit with precision!

Join the Knight Center’s free two-week online course, “Writing Tight and Editing Tighter: How to Keep Your Articles Short Enough to Get Read,” from March 23 to April 6. Learn how to craft clear, concise stories that hold readers’ attention.

Designed for journalists, editors, students, and anyone looking to refine their writing, this course will teach you how to keep articles clear and compelling—without sacrificing essential details. Writers will learn to structure assignments for brevity, streamline drafts on deadline, and collaborate effectively with editors. Editors will gain strategies for guiding writers, cutting excess without losing meaning, and delivering feedback that strengthens stories.

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:

Writers: Keep assignments focused, outline efficiently, and revise effectively
Editors: Guide writers, cut excess without losing meaning, and sharpen content
Work under deadlines without sacrificing accuracy or impact

This course is asynchronous, meaning there are no required live events, and you can complete activities at your own pace throughout each week.

The material is organized into three modules covering various topics through videos, guest speakers, readings, and discussion forums:

Introduction Module

In the introductory module, you will get an overview of the course and its mechanics and meet the instructors, John O’Neil and Jacques Steinberg. They will discuss the importance and virtues of brevity and how it should be considered throughout the entire news process, from coming up with a story idea to the last edits and polishes. And they’ll draw on their own experiences as newsroom collaborators on stories to talk about how writing tight need not be an endless fight – while acknowledging the inherent tension between reporters and editors as well as the ways in which their roles differ or overlap and providing tips on navigating this conflict in a professional manner.

Module 1: Writing Tight

The reporter is the key player in the first half of the process of creating and publishing an article. This module will focus on how story length should be a consideration at every step of the process. It will also discuss the tension between the writer’s responsibility to the facts – to the need to tell the story in a way that’s fair, accurate and understandable – and to the practical needs both of getting the news out and of competing against other demands on readers’ time and attention. We’ll also talk about how to manage the conflicts that cutting can bring, while sharing tips and tricks for cutting a lot or a little, on deadline or not.

Module 2: Editing Tighter

An editor is the reader’s representative – but also bears final responsibility for a story’s accuracy and for its publication. This inevitably sets up conflicts with reporters who feel a responsibility to the facts they’ve uncovered – and who have been known to fall in love with the words they’ve written. This module will discuss how an editor’s involvement at every stage of the process can not only minimize this conflict, but serve the reader by producing copy that gets quickly to a story’s main points.

If you have any questions, please contact us at journalismcourses@austin.utexas.edu.

John O’Neil was an editor at The New York Times and Bloomberg News for close to 40 years. He also reported and wrote articles, primarily on health and special education, for both publications. He has previously taught Knight Center courses on explanatory journalism and news research. He is currently working on a textbook on explanatory journalism and a graphic novel about Machiavelli. He wrote the lyrics for an autism awareness album featuring performances by Jackson Browne, Dar Williams and others. He lives in Brooklyn with one of his three sons, a dog and a cat.

Jacques Steinberg was a journalist at The New York Times for a quarter century. His main beats were education, including roles as the paper’s New York City and national education correspondent, as well as media, TV and pop culture, which he covered for the paper’s business and culture desks. Jacques (or Jack, as he is known to colleagues, friends and family) is a New York Times best-selling author who has written three books for Penguin Random House. They are: “The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College” and “The College Conversation: A Practical Companion for Parents to Guide Their Children Along the Path to Higher Education,” which he wrote with Eric Furda, the former dean of admissions of the University of Pennsylvania, as well as “You Are an Ironman: How Six Weekend Warriors Chased Their Dream of Finishing the World’s Toughest Triathlon.” He lives in Westchester County, NY, with his wife, Sharon, a lawyer. He is, sadly, allergic to John’s dog and cat.

Calvin Sims is executive vice president of Standards and Practices for CNN Worldwide. He is an accomplished media executive, with more than 30 years of experience in news, foreign affairs and philanthropy, serving in senior roles at International House, The New York Times, Discovery Times Channel, Ford Foundation and Council on Foreign Relations.

Joan Nassivera has been an editor at The New York Times for over 35 years. She has worked on a wide range of sections, including Metro, National and Washington, and served as the paper’s Deputy Weekend Editor. She is known for her clear news judgment when dealing with complex issues or deadline pressures and for her commitment to the highest journalistic standards.

Tanzina Vega is an American journalist whose positions have ranged from weekday host of The Takeaway, a public radio show, to CNNMoney national reporter for race and inequality in America, to staff reporter at The New York Times, where she created and covered a beat on race and ethnicity for the national desk, as well as reporting for the metro section and business desk.