A sub-editor must know something about everything

A byline is the “line” on top or very near the top of a newspaper story which names its author.

In East Africa, however, most stories reaching the chief sub-editor are so lack-lustre, so humdrum, so lacking in colour, so formless, so unexciting that the authors are made to appear only by certain very generic terms.

Thus “By Nation Reporter”, “By Nation Correspondent” and “By Nation team” are among the most common by-line forms on the pages of East Africa’s most popular newspaper group.

The bylines appearing saliently on the early pages of, for instance, last week’s Sunday Nation included “By Justus Wanga” and “By Oscar Obonyo”.

EDITING
Media consumers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda who have never lived in such other English-speaking countries as Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, the United States and Wales — countries whose newspaper traditions are much longer than East Africa’s — may not fully appreciate this point.

There are also those who have never heard of Their Excellencies known as sub-editors, namely, the newspaper cadre paid considerably better than ordinary reporters because the sub-editors it is who knock and polish the raw material by reporters and other writers into the yum-yum forms for which a newspaper consumer may lick the lips.

REMUNERATION
The point is that, in the newspaper tradition the whole world over, no sub-editor ever receives any “byline”.

As a newspaper reader, you have never seen such an attribution as “Edited by Kamau wuod Omolo” or, with reference to layout, “Designed by Alividza Nyar Salim”.

As the newspaper employees paid to polish and give shape to the raw reports, the sub-editors’ only consolation — if it is — is that, in general, they are paid a tad better than are the reporters.

The “tad”, however, is the problem. It is that, where a person qualifies to be appointed a sub-editor, he or she should be rewarded much more substantially in order, among other things, for him or her to inspire the junior colleagues into emulation.

KNOWLEDGE
Among the necessary qualifications of a sub-editor is a scientific mastery of the language in which his or her newspaper is published and a historico-sociological knowledge of, at least, his or her society and of the general human world.

For the sub-editor it is who has to struggle with the extremely troublesome language of England to produce an issue that claims any degree of literacy and ethico-intellectual respectability.

By scientific mastery, I do not mean that a sub-editor must have studied or must possess a degree in some natural science.

ENGLISH

But I do mean that all editorial employees of all self-respecting newspapers should be forced to become fully abreast of the level that science and technology have reached the whole world over.

I mean that one’s knowledge of English or the relevant language of one’s newspaper must be fully scientific — where, by “scientific” I mean that it must include a working knowledge of the sociology and history of all the words most commonly in use by one’s newspaper.

Philip Ochieng is a retired journalist. [email protected]