As journalists, we have an acute understanding of how much words matter. In our careers as reporters and editors, all of us have had experiences where we’ve made a seemingly insignificant decision to use a synonym, employ shorthand, or repeat a turn of phrase offered to us in an interview, and have made a mistake out of ignorance.
If we’re lucky, the people we’ve harmed with these missteps are generous enough to correct us and help us understand when our word choice is wrong. Language is constantly evolving, and we have a particular responsibility to keep up.
Words matter, and that is a truth that extends beyond the sentences in our articles and the headlines on our front page and across our website. Even the seemingly mundane choices we make in our day-to-day jobs producing and disseminating the news are still choices, and we should strive to make them consciously and with the utmost awareness we possess.
One of those seemingly mundane choices we are often tasked with on the Sun-Times digital team is constructing the architecture that organizes the stories on our website. As news events surface, grow and evolve, we are constantly reconsidering how we group stories to make them easier for our readers to navigate.
Typically, this serves a purely pragmatic purpose. A Jan. 21 report titled “US gets 1st case of mysterious new Chinese illness” was sorted into our News, Health and Nation/World sections. A month later, after publishing a story on Illinois’ third confirmed case of the virus, we created a “Coronavirus” section on the website. By March, the virus and its ripple effects were dominating local and national news, and we moved the Coronavirus section to the top of our homepage.
We make these editorial choices frequently. In almost every case, it’s a straightforward calculation: How big is this story? How long is its lifespan? And what is the most succinct and neutral way to encapsulate it?
Choosing “Coronavirus” was easy. At one point last year we had conversations about whether to separate stories about R. Kelly’s music career from coverage of his criminal charges and trials. Ultimately, the decision to house them all under the “R. Kelly” banner was a simple one. We have the same goals in this exercise that we do in every facet of our editorial process: to be accurate, fair and precise.
The protests in Chicago and across the country after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis on May 25, and the aftereffects of these demonstrations that have permeated our communities, our politics and our collective dialogue, represent the biggest story in America right now. There’s no question that this broad, complex topic — which touches all of our coverage areas, from politics to sports to commentary to entertainment — is deserving of dedicated real estate on our website. But the question of how to label these stories, in this case, is far from simple.
Words matter. Choosing to categorize stories about violent clashes between police and civilians alongside coverage of peaceful protests, or to place reports of looters in our communities next to statements from activists condemning them, is neither straightforward nor benign — and, crucially, it is a choice.
My colleague Maudlyne Ihejirika underlined the significance of this conflict in a column Tuesday:
The protest message has been diluted by destruction, arson and looting wreaked on neighborhoods from the wealthy Magnificent Mile to struggling ones on the South and West sides.
Protesters have spoken loud and clear in demanding justice in the Floyd case, and an end to racist policing. Destruction and looting pushes neither of those needles forward.
One of our primary goals when we interrogate our work as journalists is to anticipate —and eliminate — opportunities for bias. The labels we use to organize our reporting can send a powerful message, and so they deserve serious consideration.
I’ve had a hand in assigning labels to various sections of news websites for nearly a decade, across several newsrooms. This process often involves a great deal of thought, sometimes discussion and even debate, but the stakes have never felt this high. The consequences of a wrong choice were, at worst, imprecision or disorganization.
The words we choose to organize and contextualize our stories about the activism, conflict and chaos our city is experiencing right now carry significant weight. Is it appropriate for the New York Times to present the story “Macy’s Damage Is Limited, but Looting Deals a Symbolic Blow” under the banner “George Floyd protests,” or for Slate to label “Watch Officer Fire Pepper Balls at Reporter in Louisville and Other Videos of Police Violence” with George Floyd’s name? Is it accurate? Is it fair? Is it precise?
Are the “George Floyd protests” truly separate from the “Michael Brown protests” or the “Freddie Gray protests” or the “Laquan McDonald protests”? Is one more deserving of real estate than another? How do we make that decision objectively?
We’re launching two new sections on our website today: “Police Reform,” which will house our coverage of action in response to the systemic inequities black Americans face in interactions with the police, from protests to policy change, and “Civil Unrest,” which will chronicle the conflict and disorder that is unfolding across our city, state and nation at this moment in history. It should not be considered a politicized statement to assert that these two narratives are separate. Making that distinction is accurate. It’s fair. It is precise.
Words matter.
Did we get this right? Are there considerations we missed? Let me know.
Email: lstufano@suntimes.com
Twitter: @lizzieschiffman
