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Topic: thoughts on showing article to subject prior to publication?
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| Author | Message |
| mvance | Posted – 5/12/2005 5:02:27 AM | show profile | email poster I'm putting the finishing touches on a profile article about a large performance troupe for a local magazine. I'm thinking about showing the final draft to one of the performers who has been with the troupe the longest, in order to make sure I have all my facts straight. Am I kidding myself in thinking that I'll get any objective information from the process? Am I just opening a can of worms? Any thoughts on the pros and cons of doing this? Thanks, Matt |
| lenagrove | Posted – 5/12/2005 8:38:45 AM | show profile clear it with your editor Some editors will not allow you to do this. The release form most subjects sign says something about how they understand that the story will not be told necessarily in their own words or as they see it, or something like that. At least that's been my experience. But I've showed articles to my subjects before if the editors don't care. Depends on the subject and other factors--and how big the magazine is. The bigger magazines I've worked with usually don't allow this. |
| sparky_fuego | Posted – 5/12/2005 8:43:03 AM | show profile of course, you could just gather up the factual information and ask the principals to verify it. but that would require more effort on your part than just handing the whole story to the one source. you're also opening yourself up to all kinds of editing -- no matter how much you tell the reviewer to only check facts. that's a whole different hassle. best plan is to verify the facts without giving the story out for review. |
| caitlinkelly | Posted – 5/12/2005 8:59:34 AM | show profile Lena's right; make sure your editor is OK with that or your contract does not forbid it. If the magazine uses fact-checkers, you'll know there is some backstop. On the very rare occasions I've done it, it was very helpful as sources corrected minor innaccuracies (which mattered a lot) and didn't mess with quotes or other parts of the story. I think our fears of being heavily rewritten by sources (it depends, of course, who you're dealing with) are not always well-grounded. People usually just really want us to get it right, not to make them look like gods. ------ Freelance writer Caitlin Kelly, has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other publications. You can read samples from her new book at blownawaythebook.com |
| itsc2 | Posted – 5/12/2005 9:22:55 AM | show profile Why not just look it over, find all the facts that could possibly be in question and go over it that way? If you're really not certain about the way you've phrased something, you could do the ''So would it be accurate to say ...'' etc. tactic -- if you give them the whole article, there's a chance they'll totally rewrite it. |
| nonono | Posted – 5/12/2005 12:55:15 PM | show profile You never do this . ever. there's some ethical reason you don't do it--i think it has something to do with the fact that the subject will demand to change information, and you get filtered quotes--I don't know, but there's a reason you never do it. You should be able to just go over the story line by line and paraphrase quotes and check facts--but you never show the original piece. |
| lenagrove | Posted – 5/12/2005 2:03:19 PM | show profile I should clarify that when I've let my subjects see the story pre-publication, it was usually teenage kids I'd interviewed for fluff pieces, like how to get a summer job or something. |
| commawonk | Posted – 5/13/2005 10:42:51 AM | show profile Agree that the safest strategy is to go through the story and prepare a list of questions to check the facts and the tenor of the quotes (''Is it true that ...?''). It's more labor-intensive than showing copy to the source, but it could save you a lot of grief. Pre-publication review is a crap shoot—your source could just correct factual errors, or s/he could end up doctoring quotes and arbitrarily rewriting stuff to make it ''sound better.'' Do you trust the source enough to do this? |
| jmm | Posted – 5/13/2005 11:35:24 AM | show profile Always preferable to run any facts you want to confirm by reading that fact to a performer. I have never turned an article over to anyone ever and would have to hear a pretty good argument from an editor to make that exception. The reason would have to be exceptional. It is considered generally to be improper and you would be questioned about it by anyone who knew you did it. You would be hard put to justify it. |
| jmm | Posted – 5/13/2005 11:37:15 AM | show profile I should add that this is industry standard. Every publication I have ever worked for had a policy in place barring this practice of prepublication review. |
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