What all the lingo means
By Staff
Jason Cannon
For the last two months I've used this space to explain a little about they way things operate here. Hopefully, this insight has taught you just a little about what it takes to get a newspaper to you 13 and 14 times per month.
This month, I'd like to delve into some of the terms we use and what they mean.
Dummying the newspaper. Before we publish each edition, we have to dummy it. Dummying a newspaper entails running a manifest of all the advertising space purchased for that particular newspaper. We then use regular printer paper to block off that space. This tells us how many pages we will need and it gives us an idea of how much room for news we will have.
Composing. Composing is just about anything that puts text or art in the newspaper. Karen McAfee is our composer. She builds all our advertisements. However, when we place news copy on the page, that's composition as well.
Feature package. You typically see these on our front page. It's a story and at least one photo grouped together. The story can be about anything, but it's usually not about a "hard news" story. It's typically a story about a person or event.
Hard news story. A hard news story is usually about an arrest, conviction or death of some kind. You will find law enforcement at the core of most of these stories, as they are involved in them on some level. If the sheriff's office busts a meth lab, that's a hard news story.
Dateline. A dateline is the city where the story takes place. We only use datelines for stories outside the City of Russellville. Journalism standards dictate that they are not necessary if the story takes place in the city where the newspaper is based. You'll find a dateline at the first of each story. A date line for a story in Phil Campbell would read, "PHIL CAMPBELL -" The story would begin after the hyphen.
Volume and issue numbers. You may or may not have noticed but at the top left of every edition of the Franklin County Times is a volume and edition number. There are used by bookbinders and libraries to ensure they have each sequential copy of the Franklin County Times before they bind them. We bind issues of the Franklin County Times into books quarterly.
Most any industry has it's own lingo that's unique to the business. Newspapers are no different. Hopefully, some of what I've listed above has explained something you've possibly heard while in our office.
