Dateline do’s and don’ts:



Style & Substance (12/23/04)

Dateline do’s and don’ts:

Datelines are a very enticing ingredient in the journalism cookbook. Start a story with a spicy ABIDJAN or OUAGADOUGOU dateline, and readers are tempted to read on. But we should be judicious. We shouldn’t use a New York dateline, say, on a daily commodities roundup of news from the pits of Chicago and the palm-oil markets in Kuala Lumpur. In fact, says Global News Editor Marcus Brauchli, our use of datelines is often excessive, irrelevant and confusing.

The events in a story should clearly justify the dateline, he notes: “A story about holiday toy sales probably doesn't need a dateline, but if it’s spilling out of Wal-Mart’s Bentonville, Ark., headquarters, it probably should carry one. If a London reporter is writing about events in Fallujah, she needn’t use a London dateline; if our reporter is risking life and limb in Ramadi, he absolutely should use that dateline.”

A dateline is ill-advised if it simply reflects where the reporter happened to be when he wrote the story, Marcus advises: “If you’re in Ottawa when the company you cover in Atlanta gets bought, skip the dateline. Washington reporters routinely write about national affairs, just as health, economy, property and media reporters do in New York; they shouldn't feel a need to use a dateline on those stories unless the action is where they are.”

The stylebook’s rules under dateline selection subsequently will be revised as follows:

• Datelines should generally be used when reporters were on the scene and the stories describe events occurring in, or relating substantially to, the dateline locations.

• In multiple-byline stories, at least one of the reporters – and preferably all of them – should have reported from the location for the story to carry its dateline.

• If there is any doubt about whether reporters were present in the datelined city to report the events in the story, editors should err on the conservative side by dropping the dateline.

• Articles assembled from several cities by a number of reporters normally run with a byline box reflecting the reporters’ locations when they are relevant. Such articles may contain wire-service material, with appropriate credit in the text of the article.

• With relatively short articles that do not take bylines, use the dateline of the city where the company is based or the action is occurring. (But company briefs do not take datelines.)

The morphing of morph:

Since opening in 1995, the academy has morphed into one of Europe's breeding grounds of Islamic extremism, we said recently. It was one of 26 citations of forms of the verb morph in a three-month period, a few of them in quotations.

Morph itself originally referred to the transforming of one computer image into another, as in an animation. Eventually, morph morphed into any type of transformation. Such evolutions help keep the language vibrant (and help keep stylebook editors in business). The question is whether and when to accept the new usages. Morph’s time has arrived, though it is rapidly lapsing into cliché. We expect soon to see a TV series “Morph and Mindy.”

Heads above the rest:

• “Bond Market, Always Nervous, Now Has a New TIC” by Tim Carroll, referring to the Treasury International Capital report on foreigners’ purchases of U.S. securities.

• “Wooden Nichols: ‘In ‘Closer,’ Director Strands Pretty Cast in Ugly Tale of Relationships,” by Tom Weber, with an assist from Peter Saenger, on a review of a Mike Nichols film.

• “Brazil’s Hedge Funds Get So Hot, Hot, Hot Nest Eggs Get Fried,” by Bob Cwiklik.

• “Condé Nest,” by Peter Saenger, on an item about the new home of Vanity Fair’s editor, Graydon Carter.

• “Big Money: When 5 Cents Is Worth $3 Million,” by Bill Power, on a coin-auction story.

• “ABC's Man for Fall Season,” by Laura Bird, on a story about a new programming chief’s redoing the fall schedule.

Heads below the rest:

• “Disney’s Eisner Downplays Friendship With Ovitz.” Plays Down is our strong preference.

• “Is ‘Best Price’ Best? Depends Who You Ask.” Whom You Ask is our strong preference.

Today’s quiz:

Find the flubs in these Journal passages:

1. Delta’s losses mounted in the face of rising labor and fuel costs and a crippling price war.

2. A power of attorney is someone you have named to legally act on your behalf.

3. First introduced in the spring of 2003, the collection sold 60,000 that year, ringing up sales of about $10 million.

4. It has successfully convinced women to buy weekend bags, evening bags, backpacks and satchels.

5. The next big test of that theory: launching a tiny bag that fitted inside a regular bag.

6. “Nightline” sprung up in the 1980s, out of reports on the Iran hostage crisis.

7. Cable companies do the unthinkable and sharply scale back the rate and size of price hikes.

8. A fight is brewing over whether the articles should be widely available for free on the Internet.

9. Users bring their own mobile phone and can talk as loud as they want without bothering anybody else, or being asked to step outside.

10. The NID will have a staff of several hundred people, whom the bill specifies must work at a location other than CIA headquarters.

Answers:

1. Although some dictionaries say in the face of can mean in the presence of, it shouldn’t be used that way because the expression usually means in spite of.

2. A power of attorney is not a person; it is a power.  The holder of the power of attorney is, well, a holder of a power of attorney, or an agent or an attorney-in-fact.

3. How does that compare with its second introduction? The redundancy first introduced appeared 11 times in three months.

4. It persuaded them to buy them. Can we persuade you not to use convince with the infinitive?

5. This use of fitted instead of fit for the past tense is standard British English, but increasingly substandard American English.

6. Sprang is the preferred past tense.

7. This use of hikes is what’s unthinkable.

8. Why and wherefore the for? Delete it.

9. They can talk as loudly as they like. And the comma is unnecessary.

The bill specifies who must work at such a location.

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