Conveying and interpreting

Last year, we experimented with editorial roles. Manoeuvering between snippet newspaper and opinion magazine proved to be a tricky task. Yet we want to be more than just a conduit.

Whoever passes on news, selects. An age-old journalistic fact, with which editors have struggled for just as long. Because every selection involves a certain degree of subjectivity. The editors of the Zeepost, Scheepspost and Windassist also select and edit, thus giving direction to the reporting.

Quoting and editing

We rarely copy news items in their entirety. There are various reasons for this, copyright being perhaps the most important one. To copy a report written by another author, you need permission from the author and/or his or her employer.
From a number of regular sources and their authors we have that, but if not, we only have ‘quoting rights’, a term indicating that we may use parts of an already published piece, but only if it fits within a self-written text, which makes up the bulk of the piece. Sometimes that means taking the structure and a few sentences from a source, but largely rewriting the piece in our own words.
Making a text your own in this way involves choices: what do you take over and what don’t you? What gets emphasis, what shifts to the background? Editing inevitably involves applying one’s own colour, to varying degrees.

Big words

A good example is the many news in Windassist about large merchant ships with some form of wind support. Those so-called retrofit installations at best provide 10-15% fuel savings and emission reductions, but the texts with which the CEOs responsible announce their next project are full of hyperbolas. Without exception, their company is “on the front line of sustainability”, is “leading the energy transition”, is “utterly committed to emission-free shipping by 2030”, is reaching milestone after milestone and, among all competitors, is “the first major shipping company” to put a sail on a supertanker.
If you’ve seen a message like this pass by 10 times, you’ll know. We pass on the news because it shows how practically all major shipping companies are working on sustainability, but we filter out the overblown claims.

Staying credible

The main reason is that we want to remain credible to our readers. After all, these are not average news consumers, but well-informed connoisseurs of the nautical domain, who don’t fancy humbug. We can let them filter that out themselves, but we’d rather do them the favour of a relevant text where that humbug has already been removed. Of course, we also consider our own relevance in doing so: we wouldn’t like our readers to think that we can’t separate the wheat from the chaff, because then we would soon no longer be taken seriously as a news medium.
The editors are largely made up of people who have travelled enough nautical miles themselves to know what they are writing about, and as a reader you can then count on what you read not containing nonsense.

Clarification

It gets more precarious when we also want to provide some interpretation. The recommended route for this is to quote experts, but sometimes news comes through where those experts are unavailable, or we lack the manpower and time to consult them. Then it becomes tempting to use your own expertise.
An example was the news in the Scheepspost about zomp skippers (the zomp being a traditional, relatively small wooden boat that was built only for the small waters in the eastern part of The Netherlands), who had to get a VHF licence because they sail on public water with paying passengers. They themselves thought this was nonsense, as was evident from several articles we read about it. In these, the other side was not raised at all, whereupon the editors felt it was their responsibility, in the form of an added commentary, to bring in the argument of passenger safety.

Independent

That comment provoked different reactions. Some readers welcome it, but there are also those who should have none of it. Usually because they can make it up themselves, but sometimes also because they see a particular interest harmed, or simply disagree with us. A special category consists of our advertisers and sponsors: do we spare them or can we write something that might not be to their liking? The editors are – of course – independent, but also not blind to financial realities. We assume that our sponsors do not want to reduce us to the mouthpiece of only their ideas and views, but realise that it is a delicate line we sometimes balance on.

‘Wouter never commented either,’ is a common argument used by opponents of an opinionated editorial. However, that ignores the fact that founder and inspirer Wouter van Dusseldorp also selected from the news, sometimes explicitly asking others to write a commentary piece for the Zeepost. That the current editors occasionally did so under their own names in the past year is, at best, a stylistic departure, but substantively no different.

Mission

In our internal discussions on this subject, we have not yet found a clear line, although some reactions force us to adopt a cautious attitude. So for interpretation and opinion, we always look for experts ‘from outside’, but regularly run up against a lack of time and people, in which case our own expertise can offer a solution.
To determine our own role, we then like to fall back on the question of what the ‘Posts’ and Windassist are actually on earth for: what is our mission?
There are certain themes from which that can be read: when it comes to safety, for example, the editors unconcealedly opt for the most professional approach. Those who badmouth it or rant about regulations are less likely to get a podium than those who do all they can.
With regard to the sailing heritage, the editors also opt for a broad approach in line with the Valuation Framework, which means, for example, that fewer people are given the floor who still measure everything by building-state originality. Also in line with this approach is the choice to bridge gaps between the charterfleet and the non-professional sailing heritage ships: both belong to ‘the largest heritage fleet in the world’.

Elevation

You could say that our choices are in line with an old ’empowerment and elevation ideal’: in everything we strive for the higher plan. We do so when it comes to safety, or sustainability, or improving legal positions.
Readers will continue to find that aspiration reflected in our selection of news, in the editing of articles, and, perhaps, also occasionally in the form of a sharp commentary. We will preferably have the latter articulated by someone on the outside, but it does show that, as editors, we take positions ourselves.

As this is an ongoing quest, we naturally remain curious about how our choices come across to readers. So we are open to constructive comments, and are curious about anything that can help us develop this medium into a source that resonates optimally both as a conduit and in terms of interpretation.

You can always reach us for that at redactie@zeepost.info.

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