EDITING THE HARD-NEWS STORY
EXERCISE 48
NAME
Practice exercise. Answers in back of book.
Edit the following briefs, paying particular attention to wordiness. You do not want to delete any information. You'll also find errors in grammar and AP style. Assume that the briefs are for an NSU campus
newspaper. An edited version is in the back of your book. Remember that cutting stories requires some
subjective decisions. You may find that we caught some things you missed. You may also decide that some
of your changes are better than ours.
STORY 1
Journalism students at Northern State University won't be using new computers as soon as they had
hoped. The journalism department on Monday rejected the only bid it received for the new equipment.
Professor Susan Pritchard said the department had hoped to replace the twenty aging computers in its
graphics labs with state of the art equipment but had received only one bid from computer suppliers.
She said the department was forced to reject the sole bid because it was too high. She said they will
readvertise for bids and that will delay the purchase of computers for several months.
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STORY 2
Rodney Darwin, president of Citizens Bank, will be the speaker Saturday at the Tenth Annual Awards
banquet for the Northern State University Economics Club.
Darwin will be the substitute speaker in place of Congressman William E. Greshaw. Mr. Greshaw will
be unable to speak at the banquet because he will be in Washington attending the special session of congress.
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