Reporters work in the Globe and Mail's newsroom on Jan. 23, 2017.Fred Lum
This month’s column answers a few of the most common questions I receive. Although I do reply to readers’ e-mails individually, others might be curious about the same issues but perhaps shy about writing in. (You needn’t be – it’s my job to respond to questions about The Globe and Mail’s editorial practices, and my e-mail address can be found at the end of this column.)
Without further ado, here’s the Q and A.
Why does The Globe sometimes use American spellings and terminology?
The Globe’s Style Book specifies Canadian terms and spellings – for example, “centre” versus the American “center” and “labour” versus “labor.” However, style slips occasionally happen. More frequently, American spellings are used for proper names, such as the Kennedy Center in Washington.
In addition, online articles from American wire services maintain their American spellings and terminology, although currencies are converted. While not ideal, this practice helps editors get information to readers as quickly as possible. Sometimes, too, a wire article is published with the knowledge that the wire will be replaced with a staff-written article when it’s ready, and so copy editing the wire article would not be a good use of a staff editor’s time. Wire stories are copy edited to Globe style when they are published in the print edition.
The Globe has updated its newsroom AI guidelines
Why wasn’t a sports event covered in the print edition?
Sports fans are understandably frustrated when the team or event they’re following isn’t covered in the print edition or they are referred online to globesports.com for full coverage and final scores. On weekdays, the print edition often includes only three or four sports pages, which are staffed by a small (and award-winning) team that must ensure their coverage balances the interests of a broad national readership and that a wide variety of different sports are covered over the course of weeks and months.
A sporting event might not make the print edition because it ended after the newsroom’s 10 p.m. ET deadline. For a playoff game or other significant event, editors may make the call to push past the deadline (and there is a financial cost for doing so), but in most cases a regular-season game does not justify holding up the printing process. Wider coverage is always available online at globesports.com, or on the app.
Why is the article I want to read behind a paywall?
The answer is simple: Quality journalism costs money. In the past, news organizations generated robust operating income through the sale of print advertising. But as reader habits and advertising have shifted online, the dollars directed to news media have shrunk, making it more challenging to finance all of the things that go into a world-class newsroom: experienced journalists, travel expenses, office space and equipment, the cost of printing a paper and producing digital editions. Today, a larger proportion of advertising budgets are spent with Google and Meta, requiring news organizations to focus more on subscriptions and other fees paid by readers.
Who, and what, determines which news is fit to publish?
It is true that some news organizations offer paywall-free access to their news content – for example, the CBC, which is primarily public-funded but also generates some revenue from audience fees and advertising, and The Guardian, which is funded by a trust, as well as by advertising sales and reader donations.
The Globe and Mail is independently owned, and subscriptions – the pay-for-access fees that unlock the paywall – are an essential funding source.
Why wasn’t my comment published online?
Recently, a subscriber e-mailed to ask if he was on a commenting hit list. It seemed to him that other subscribers’ comments were published immediately, while his appeared to sit in limbo for anywhere from several minutes to a few hours before they showed up online.
There are a few reasons why this might happen. Often, the article has been set to “premoderation” because it deals with a sensitive issue that historically has elicited a large number of comments that contravene The Globe’s Community Guidelines. So, all submitted comments are held until they can be reviewed by a human moderator.
Standards Editor: Comments are closed to prevent abuse and misinformation, not censor opinion
Comments may also be held for review because they contain a word that is flagged by the platform’s language filter. Upon review, moderators may find that the suspect word is being used in a legitimate way and will approve and publish the comment, or that a spelling error has inadvertently created an inappropriate word, and the commenter is invited to resubmit their comment without the unfortunate typo so it can be published.
In one subscriber’s case, the cause for what seemed like the non-appearance of submitted comments was a combination of premoderation and difficulty finding his comments online once they’d been published. He suggested that the London Times’ practice of e-mailing commenters when another community member has recommended or replied to their post would help with that.
The Globe is always looking for ways to improve the commenting experience, and I forwarded his suggestion to the team that oversees the form and function of the commenting platform. If you have an idea you’d like to share, e-mail me at standardseditor@globeandmail.com and I’ll pass it along, too.