BleacherReport.com

Editing is editing is editing—for the most part.

If you survived ninth-grade English, you already have the core skills you’ll need to be a successful Bleacher Report editor. There are, however, a handful of unique challenges posed by online, open-source editing work. The methodology and philosophy laid out in this brief primer are designed to help you meet them—and to help you make Bleacher Report the best network it can possibly be.

Methodology

Online, open-source editing is an inexact science. There’s no magic-bullet methodology that can turn a bad article into a good one.

That said, the best Bleacher Report articles generally exhibit three fundamental qualities: Concision, Clarity, and Centeredness. As an editor, it’s got to be your goal to cultivate each of them in the pieces you revise.

Concision

Brevity is the soul of wit, especially on the Internet. Given the short attention spans of online readers,it’s important that Bleacher Report articles be as concise as possible.

In a practical sense, this means it’s your job as an editor to eliminate excess verbiage. If a phrase is redundant, cut it. If a sentence is wordy, shorten it. If a piece is bloated, it’s your job to trim the fat.

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