The Skeptical Editing Technique

This approach, employed at the Portland Oregonian, is as its name suggests, mostly an editing tool, but it can be used by the writer him or herself.

In Oregon they actually call it prosecutorial editing, but there is another editor in Connecticut, Reid McCluggage, who talks about something similar, which he calls Skeptical Editing, and we much prefer that term.

With this approach reporters know their editor will in effect adjudicate their stories line by line-on major stories with the reporter at their side asking: How do you know this? Why should the reader believe this? What is the assumption behind this sentence? Amanda Bennett, a former managing editor in Portland now working in Kentucky, said skeptical editing is great for "rooting out not so much errors of fact, but unconscious errors of assertion and narrative."