Cleaning up the Quote: Wash Post Ombudsman faults ex-Reporter Howard Bryant

I record everything I'm there for. I go back and double check. I'll hit index on my recorder when I know it's something I'll use, and it takes me 40 seconds to go back and double check it.

 

Guess I need to get one of those fancy recorders then

As it stands, I'd never make deadline screwing with a recorder.

 

I remembered hearing that the AP got in trouble for quoting Sosa verbatim a while back. from what i heard it was someone on the desk in NY listening to a feed that did it. This was one of the few stories I could find about it, but it presents that other side to this debate...

http://www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/2003/vol7n42/LatinosFindWay-en.html

 

I heard a sports editor tell a story once about Mark Bowden. Back in the day, he covered the Eagles for one of the Philly papers. Early in Jerome Brown's career, Bowden used to quote him exactly as he talked which, for those who knew JB, wasn't exactly proper English.

Well, Brown confronted Bowden one day and said, "Why are you trying to make me look stupid?"

Bowden had never considered the thought, and from that point on, did his best to clean up Brown's quotes.

That might not be exactly how the story goes, but the spirit of it is correct.

 

We've debated this multiple times on these boards...
If Bryant and Wise sync their quotes, or the slot syncs their quotes, this instance isn't a discussion.
In some stories, if quotes weren't cleaned and/or sanitized, there would be zero quotes.
When extensive paraphrasing occurs speaking for an athlete, additional problems occur. The reader is wondering what the quote was and what was omitted.

 

Your last line made me laugh.

But the answer to Brown should have been, "They're your words. I'm not doing anything to make you look stupid...you are."

Brown was born here, yes? English was his first language, yes? Then he has NO legs to stand on.

 

What does that mean? If it's a great quote, why would you not find a way to use it?

 

My question about "cleaning up" quotes has always been this: Every one of us who works in this business has had a copy editor fix bad grammar or misspelled words that we have written. If I have a subject-verb agreement error or mindlessly write "their" when I mean "they're" or "it's" when I mean "its," if the story appears under my byline with no credit to a copy editor then should the copy editor change it to make it right? I think most of us would say yes. So why am I any more entitled to that kind of copy editing than one of my interview subjects is? If he said "Hendricks Motorsports" when the name of the team is "Hendrick," shouldn't I make that right? Don't I owe my sources the same courtesy of editing that I get from my desk?

 

Exactly.. try talking to a 16-year-old kid who has a stream-of-unconsciousness streak that Benito Santiago would envy, chew no?

 

Because at its core it's a great quote. But he dropped a curse word, some roundabout talk and a tangent in the middle. And with all the brackets and ellipses, it just wasn't worth it.

 

The next time you cover a press conference, do this...

Record it and try to write down the best 2-3 quotes as the person is talking. I would say with 90 percent certainty that you can't get 2-3 full quotes (Two sentences each...) down verbatim...

I try to do this in postgame and it's never 100 percent right. I might have 12 of 14 words right, but it's never perfect.

I record everything. I transcribe almost everything. How anybody in this business can work without a recorder is beyond me...

 

A word to all those who say quotes should never be changed: Be careful. You have now forfeited the right to do this yourself. And you'll be surprised how fast you'll be tempted to violate it.
I see the value in Wise's verbatim transcript. I was able to "hear" Portis saying it. I imagined that he was facially animated. It provided a good image. But I think you're got to be careful.
It is also wrong for the ombudsman to chide Bryant when the Post's own guidelines indicate it's not such an obvious or easy choice. Let's say Bryant's editor overheard the interview. I can't imagine there's any editor in America who would have called Bryant on the carpet for cleaning up the quote. The Post's editor was put in a tough spot here. I suspect he, like all of us, would have enjoyed the chance to tell the ombudsman to lighten up and try to recall what it was like to be a reporter decades ago.