Show Letters to the Editor Dear Horizon Editor Horizons Horizon's Jan art 29 1992 edition carried my article entitled Ignite your body's furnace The three paragraphs containing quotations were inaccurately altered by Horizon My source Pat Lang was given a journalistic sex change He Ik is understandably understandably under under- extremely upset Because Pat is a man not man not a woman I wrote said Pat Lang or Lang said Horizon added she added and she explained Page of News Reporting and Writing required text for fort t journalism courses reads 1 If a direct quote is more than one sentence long place the attribution at the end of b. b the first sentence That one attribution is adequate It would be redundant to write he added or he continued Page continues the explanation Maybe Horizon editors should periodically review basic journalism practices before they buff the polish off someone else's article I understand that editing is part of an editors editor's job I dont don't however understand why the decision to inaccurately alter what was grammatically and structurally correct and to make makeN N Pat a woman was made arbitrarily and without checking the facts How can we as journalists maintain credibility with our i sources if these kinds of mistakes are made Martha Stahle Stable 7 r u 1 j h- h t t.- t. |