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May 8, 2006 :: Volume 2, Issue 4
Next Issue: May 2007

How To Create An Editorial Process To Publish Web Content

Posted by TimSlavin at November 17, 2003

Recently I read an article online that complained about the poor quality of content on internet and intranet websites. The upshot: too many web authors think getting their authoring technology right will take care of the publishing part. Without a publishing plan, deadlines slip and content is published haphazardly.

While there is some truth to this argument, I found it simplistic. There are many reasons for weak content on the web and not all of them are bad. In some cases, weblogs for example, a little imperfection can be perfect. A weblog of polished entries would be suspect in many cases.

More importantly, the article outlined basic solutions professional publishers would know how to flesh out. Average people with no publishing experience would be left clueless. What is an ideal editorial publishing process, for example? What guidelines should be used to write and edit content?

This article describes how anyone, from a florist to an intranet web team, can develop a publishing process that meets their needs. I will not attempt to describe the more complex publishing processes found in professional newsrooms because that level of detail is not needed for most businesses to publish their web content.

The Editorial Process

Based on what content is published, the editorial process can be elaborate or simple. A small business owner, for example, might follow this process:

  1. Develop a list of what to publish and when for a set time period
  2. Write each piece of content based on the publication schedule
  3. Edit each piece
  4. Publish each piece

A corporate web team might have a much more complex, and flexible, publishing process:

  1. Develop a list of what to publish and when for a set time period; include backup content items for each item slated for publication; include break points to determine whether to delay or kill each content item.
  2. Assign each piece of content based on the publication schedule
  3. Write each piece of content
  4. Review first draft of each piece of content
  5. Give go/no go based on first draft edits (adjust publication schedule if/as needed)
  6. If go, finish writing each piece of content and submit draft as FYI to layout team
  7. Perform final edit, copy edit, fact checking, and rewrites as needed
  8. Submit for review by legal team
  9. Make changes if/as needed based on legal input
  10. Submit content formally to layout team
  11. Post content on development server and make changes if/as needed
  12. Publish content on production server

In both the simple and complex process, movement is forward and iterative. You encounter and cross a series of hurdles that lead to publication. If you don't have a calendar of content to be published, for example, you cannot progress to writing content. Well, you can but you risk publishing content that does not meet the needs of your readers.

I'll discuss two parts of the editorial process in some detail, the editorial calendar and guidelines for content.

The Editorial Calendar

The editorial calendar is the heart of any successful publishing process. Without it, content publishing online and offline is guaranteed to be random in terms of what readers want to read, full of gaps (content doesn't get published because some pieces take longer than needed and backup pieces are not in the pipeline), and poor quality.

For simple web publishing, the editorial calendar needs these elements at a minimum:

  1. What to publish based on audience needs
  2. Prioritized list of what to publish
  3. Work effort required to publish each piece of content
  4. Micro-content needed (e.g., page titles, headlines, navigation link labels, ALT tags, footers, blurbs)
  5. Dates assigned for writing, editing, publishing for each piece of content

For large groups, the editorial calendar should include these elements:

1-4 above with line items added to #4 for copy editors, fact checkers, photographers, layout team, legal approval, and other participants

  1. Backup content identified for each piece of content on the calendar
  2. Go/No Go breakpoints identified for each piece of content and/or within the process (e.g., if interviews are not possible or a writer gets sick)

No matter the size of your publishing team, when you design your editorial process be sure to consider the scarcity of approval resources. Lawyers should be brought in as late as possible and as little as possible to maximize their time. Otherwise you risk endless (and avoidable) rewrite cycles and complaints. With lawyers, this might mean one review towards the end of the process. With the layout team, it might mean showing them early drafts of stories so they know what content will be included in each issue.

One prime use of the editorial calendar is to push back when others in your organization make unreasonable demands. A good editorial calendar makes a wonderful educational tool to teach those outside the publishing team the steps, time, and resources required to publish content. It can help with budget battles. Development and maintenance of your editorial calendar also can be an opportunity to include those who will pressure your schedule. It won't buy you extra time in some cases but it will give you more leverage than if you have no calendar.

Finally, anyone with project management experience will recognize that a good editorial calendar is, in fact, a good project plan. There is one key difference. An editorial calendar is a rolling affair: individual pieces of content are completed but you never get to the end of the calendar until you're fired or you quit or the publication shuts down.

Guidelines for Writing and Editing

In addition to the editorial calendar, any publication process should include style guidelines for writers and editors to follow. These guidelines are in addition to any layout guidelines used to control the publication design. Writing guidelines can include:

  • Length of pieces published as well as the different kinds of pieces
  • Examples of appropriate tone and structure for each kind of content piece
  • Examples of things to avoid (e.g., first person, insulting the CEO, using less than 2 sources for each fact)
  • Examples of file names and how they evolve through the process (e.g., to indicate versions)
  • Grammar, punctuation, and language guidelines

The first four items are created in-house by the site publisher or publication team. Grammar and language guidelines are either adopted from existing sources (the Chicago Style Manual or Associated Press Style Guide, for example) or modified from several sources. The Washington Post, New York Times, and Newsweek follow the latter route with their own internal style guides.

The primary benefit of these guidelines is a consistent experience for readers as well as all members of the publishing team. Guidelines minimize the number of times the team has to reinvent the wheel when they assign, write, edit, and publish. Consistency does not mean boring, however. Cheeky writing full of attitude may appear to be written off the cuff. More often cheekiness is the result of deliberate writing and editing choices defined well before the writing happens.

For a small business, writing and editing guidelines could be the Associated Press Style Guide and printouts of a few articles that serve as best practice examples. Large publishing teams might document and publish a style guide with extensive examples and links to resources for the team to follow and consult as needed. They also might create and maintain a large glossary as copy edit decisions are made over time.

Ideas for Web Publishing Best Practices

In addition to an editorial calendar and guidelines for writing and editing content, here are some ideas for best practices specifically for web publishing:

Include author name with link to short bio. A reader of this website sent me an email stating that while I had written what appeared to be a useful article, he could not trust my article because he did not know the author or their background. Until he had that information, he insisted most readers would dismiss my article. Being raised Catholic, my first response was to assume guilt and fix the problem. Further reflection, however, led me to the conclusion that he was right. The author bio is an important bit of context needed in any publication but especially on the web where facts and lies can appear equally credible.

Include Publication Date. I see a lot of content on the web that lacks a publication date. My hunch is that the content is evergreen, useful at any date or time, and the site publisher is afraid dating their piece would make the content appear old. Dated content, in turn, would compel the publisher to replace the content, update the content, or add new content. I would argue, however, that publication date is as critical a piece of context as author information and for the same reason: it increases credibility. Issues about content freshness can be handled easily as noted in the next idea.

Include Changes section at bottom of the content. Except for blurbs or other short content pieces, every bit of content should have a heading at the bottom titled "Changes To This Content" (or similar language). If there are no changes, the heading should be followed by a sentence, "No updates at this time" or similar language. In addition, when you do update the content, be sure to put a single sentence at the top of the content that says, in effect, "Changes to this content are noted at the bottom." This approach will allow you to provide publication date as context, a mechanism to easily note to readers what content has been updated, and take advantage of the immediacy of the web. Specifically, maintaining a change list allows you to expand your content easily over time.

Create an Excel spreadsheet to track your process. While an obvious step, this does not have to be complex. You need at least two pages in your spreadsheet file: one page to track content and one to track your glossary and basic style rules for punctuation, grammar, language, and other issues. The content tracking page should include the content title; dates for writing, editing, copy editing, fact checking, layout, and other milestones; notes that define Go and No Go breakpoints; and a comment field to track and update history. Your Excel spreadsheet should be on a computer where your entire team can access the file (although you have to be careful about version control...). Of course, if you have a full blown content management system with version control, an Excel spreadsheet is a moot point.

Media Journalism vs. Corporate Journalism

I would end this piece by commenting on the perceived differences between content published by media outlets and content published by corporations and businesses. Typically, corporate journalism and writing is considered to be a pale version of the more rigorous and transparent standards followed by media journalists. Media journalists are supposed to be better trained, more thorough, and more fierce than a Director of Communications writing articles for an internal newsletter or website.

Some of this is true, of course. But much of it is not.

While it is true that media journalists are trained to fact check and to be skeptical, these benefits can be undermined by deadlines and subtle issues such as the perceived priorities of different beats. White House reporters, for example, see their stories on the front page of their papers more often than reporters covering the state house. Important stories at the state house level can be buried beneath comparatively less valuable stories from the national level. Reading several different media outlets on the web also quickly shows reporters often omit critical details reported elsewhere. It is unclear if these omissions happen due to deadlines, laziness, or the journalist's ability (or inability) to refute (or confirm) facts. Readers are left to wonder which reported facts are true.

At the same time, corporate journalists and editors I have worked with realize fact based reporting of corporate activities reads better and is better received than watered down writing. Employees buy into organizational changes, for example, if facts are reported in detail with context that relates to their job situation. They don't buy in if change is presented with boilerplate happy talk. And there may be little difference between a corporate journalist who does not offend their CEO in print and a media journalist whose editors achieve the same result (intentionally or not) in editing their stories.

Bottomline, an editorial calendar and guidelines for writers and editors are only a start. It is equally important to pursue content that is factually accurate, fully in context, relevant to your readers, and timely. If you're a corporate journalist or writer, for example, don't assume your standards have to be lower than media journalists. Force your editors to cut you back rather than self-edit. That's the only way to ensure you publish good content and make the most of your editorial publishing process.

Resources Mentioned In This Article

There are hundreds of onlines resources for writers, journalists, and editors. I have listed only the most basic resources a small business might need to use to develop an editorial process to publish content.


Edit-Work.com: How To Establish Editorial Consistency and Correctness Throughout A Web Site
http://www.edit-work.com/howto/


Estimating Editorial Tasks: A Five-Step Method
http://www.eeicommunications.com/eye/estimate.html


Associated Press Style Guide
http://fredericksburg.com/FreeLanceStarCompany/Newsrooms/newsroom/FLSstyle/flsstyle.htm


RefDesk Grammar, Usage, and Style Resources
http://www.refdesk.com/factgram.html


Rensselaer: Revising Prose
http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/revise.html


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Comments

Excellent article, Tim. I've been meaning to blog this in CONTENTIOUS for awhile. I finally just got around to that. See "Corporate Journalism: More Effective than Corporate Communications?" at http://blog.contentious.com/archives/000126.html

...That blog entry of mine focuses, obviously, on the concept of "corporate journalism," which I find intriguing and which I think has a lot of useful potential. If you want to tell your readers about that article, feel free.

However, with regard to the focus of your article, the editorial process -- you hit the nail right on the head! I continue to be astounded at the way companies that are not primarily publishing companies often ignore or mangle the editorial process, even though they may publish significant amounts of content online and in print. ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!! And then they complain about how hard publishing is! I'm going to keep recommending your article, a lot. Thanks for writing it.

- Amy Gahran
Editor, CONTENTIOUS

Posted by: Amy Gahran at March 1, 2004 11:47 AM

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