{"id":8032,"date":"2025-07-22T16:26:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=8032"},"modified":"2025-07-22T19:52:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T00:52:03","slug":"cutting-to-the-chase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/cutting-to-the-chase\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting to the chase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before cherubs, I was the writer whose articles were always at least 1,000 words over the word count. Every. Single. Time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What I thought was <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">good <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">writing, flooded with adjectives, qualifiers and \u201ctherefores,\u201d was far from it in the journalism world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cherubs taught me that brevity could be even more powerful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lead, or lede, should get straight to the point. As the program taught me, it\u2019s better to KISS (keep it short and simple) than to KILL (keep it long and laborious). I looked back at the 17 articles I had written for my high school publication, The New Trier News. Shoot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After running back to Jones Hall after the Fourth of July parade, I stared at my keyboard for a half hour before I started writing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I had too many ideas. How could I\u00a0 put the spectators\u2019 reactions, the tumblers\u2019 flips and the unpredictable weather into one 500-word article? After a few hours of writing, and even more of editing, I finished. I had 527 words. Not 1,000 words over the count, but 27.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The 30 minutes I spent frozen at my laptop <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">was <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">progress.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Full confession: The first draft of this piece was over double the word count. But believe me, you\u2019re not missing anything. All the most important ideas are still here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cherubs taught me how to edit, how much to cut, and when to stop. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cherubs taught me how to be concise and choose words thoughtfully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":9415,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[496],"class_list":["post-8032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":496,"user_id":201,"is_guest":0,"slug":"margueriteburgoon","display_name":"Margy Burgoon","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e111f8c8999099c124e18ff7ad668d7dc2ed15fffde9f140a043c91ca2235c39?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"Burgoon","first_name":"Margy","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8032"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9815,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8032\/revisions\/9815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8032"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}