Note: There will be plenty of overlap between the stages below, and it may be necessary for authors and editors to return to prior stages as the process progresses, but we list the stages here as a sequence in order to draw attention to the distinct tasks involved in the editorial process.
Stage One: Ideological Coherence.
The first things to address are whether the article under review is coherent and whether it basically accords with our movement. An ideologically incoherent or anti-Communist article is, naturally, a non-starter.
The Editorial Board is entrusted with “ideological leadership,” which means that it is principally responsible for this stage of the editorial process.
Ask the following questions:
- Does the article have a central thesis? If so, then what is it?
- Is the author’s thesis apparent in the text? If not, then what makes it unclear?
- Is this thesis theoretically coherent within a Marxist framework? Moreover, is it logically sound?
Stage Two: Comprehensibility and Accessibility.
The Red Clarion is intended for a broad audience — politically advanced and active workers and poor people who may not have any prior knowledge of Marxism, as well as Communist sympathizers interested in reading Marxist analysis of current events. This second stage is about making the article accessible to such an audience.
Again, this stage is principally the Editorial Board’s responsibility.
Ask the following questions:
- Will the article be accessible to a non-Marxist? In other words, are all Marxist concepts and terms present in the article properly introduced and sufficiently explained?
- Will the article be accessible to a non-expert? For example, say we’re writing an article about some effects of climate change — will a reader who lacks scientific training and climate science education, and who has only a rudimentary scientific literacy, understand the main points?
- Does the author provide sufficient background information for the reader to understand the article’s “narrative,” and what’s at stake? Remember: what might seem perfectly obvious to us might not be obvious to everyone.
Stage Three: Factual Accuracy.
This stage is pretty straightforward. More or less all factual claims that are not “common knowledge” (e.g., “humans are mammals,” “the U.S. has 50 states,” “smoking cigarettes causes cancer,” “basketball is a popular sport,” etc.), and especially factual claims that may be in doubt, should be reliably sourced.
Ask the following questions:
- Is this fact true? If you even need to ask, and especially if you find yourself searching the Internet just to check, then the claim most likely needs a source.
- Is this fact relevant? Beyond the mere truth-value of the claim, does it belong in the article in the first place? Does its inclusion help construct a cogent, convincing argument? Does it feel out of place, or distracting, and does it need to be more explicitly connected to the article’s greater narrative?
- Is this fact contextualized? Some facts are straightforward, and don’t need to be situated with further explanation. Some are more nuanced, or complicated, or misleading, etc., and need to be explained when included.
Responsibility for this stage in the editorial process still falls mainly on the Editorial Board, but Copy Editors should also practice scrutinizing factual accuracy with a keen eye.
Stage Four: Readability and Style.
Now that we’ve addressed the content of the article (coherence, comprehensibility and accessibility, and factual accuracy) we can proceed to questions of style.
At this stage, the Copy Editor begins to take over from the Editorial Board.
We’ll start with the “big picture” — the forest, rather than the trees. For now, our focus is improving the article’s readability. We want the article’s overall structure, “flow,” diction, and other stylistic elements to effectively communicate the author’s ideas and, taken together, make for a pleasurable, comfortable, “natural,” etc. reading experience. This is the essence of line-editing, where we improve readability paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, or, so to speak, line by line, as opposed to copy-editing, where we take a “fine-tooth comb” to grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. and bring these elements into consistency with our style guide, and proofreading, where we closely read over the text for residual errors and finishing touches.
Things to consider when line-editing:
- The overall structure should be simple, but effective. Related ideas should “feel” naturally connected from one paragraph and one sentence to the next; an idea that is contingent on some antecedent should clearly follow from that antecedent. If you are confused as to how one idea in an article is connected to another, it’s likely the reader will be confused, too.
- When introducing new concepts or a nuanced analysis, clarity is key. If you’re unsure whether a given paragraph, sentence, etc. is sufficiently clear, here’s a test you can perform: Restate the author’s ideas in your own words. If you can do so almost effortlessly, then the passage passes the clarity test. If not, then it’s likely that a reader who is less familiar with Marxism, the subject at hand, and the facts of the case will struggle to understand the passage, and it should be rewritten — in that case, most fortunately, you’ve already done the work of restating it in your own words!
- As a rule, agitation should be concise. An article should contain no extraneous paragraphs; a paragraph, no extraneous sentences; and a sentence, no extraneous words — except for rhetorical effect. Don’t be afraid to delete superfluous words, clauses, and even whole sentences; sometimes it’s helpful to write more than you need, and then trim the fat.
- The heart of agitation is exposure and indictment that moves the reader, not necessarily to immediate action, but always to sympathy with or, better yet, commitment to a definite perspective and position in the struggle. Therefore, the best agitation feels conversational — quite literally, the reader should feel that she is in conversation with the agitator. She is not reading a mere news report or fact sheet, a mere list of grievances or demands, etc. She is reading — or, better yet, “hearing” — an impassioned speech, as if she is in the audience, or one side of a riveting dialogue, as if she is sitting across from her interlocutor.
- Relatedly, agitation should be engaging, but not bombastic, overbearing, or stereotyped. The last thing agitation should do is bore the reader, and for that very reason, it also shouldn’t hound them with empty platitudes, declarations, slogans, Marxist watchwords and shibboleths, etc. For a particularly common and irritating example, your article definitely does NOT need to include a pithy and very poor explanation of dialectical materialism. There are some good textbooks on the subject; a popular newspaper article isn’t the place to recapitulate them. Don’t handwave or waffle on about DiaMat — apply it! If you really grasp the method, then it will shine through. A good read on this problem is Mao’s speech Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing.
- With a few exceptions, we should prefer active to passive voice.
Stage Five: Final Touches.
The penultimate stage in the editorial process is copy-editing and proofreading. As we stated above, copy-editing is the “fine-tooth comb” part of the process, where grammar, punctuation, spelling, and other granular elements are corrected and rendered consistent with our style guide.
For guidance with this work, see our in-house style guide: Style Unity.
True to its name, copy-editing is entirely the job of the Copy Editor.
Proofreading is the final check before an article is sent back to the Editorial Board for approval. One careful proofreading should be sufficient.
Proofreading is a job either for a Pressworker in the “Copy Editor” role (preferably not the same Pressworker who copy-edited the article in question, though; we should prefer fresh eyes) or a PressOrg Supporter or Guest (in our Discord Server) with the specially designated “Proofreader” role. Again, proofreaders should carefully study and apply our in-house style guide.
Stage Six: Approval and Publication.
Finally, the article will go to the Editorial Board’s proverbial “desk” for approval.
Articles require approval by two Editors before publication. That means two Editors must carefully read over the article, checking one last time for glaring errors and unresolved problems — ideological, factual, and stylistic.
Back to Resources for Pressworkers.
Once it has approved an article, the Board must schedule it for publication on our website. We have a guide for posting articles on WordPress: [SOP] WordPress Posting.
The Board is also responsible for notifying a Comms Officer of new content to be advertised on our social media. Comms Officers can refer to the following document for guidance on advertising new articles: [SOP] Social Media Guidelines. If each hand the article passed through in the preceding stages was attentive in the execution of its work, then this stage should pass the quickest. If not… well, some of the preceding stages might need to be repeated. But that’s what this guide is for!