Bearbetning av nyhetstext. En studie av texthantering vid sex svenska dagstidningar

Sammanfattning: Prior to the printing of news texts in newspapers, an internal review is performed by various journalistic editors. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the editing of texts at different editorial offices. How is the work organised? What kinds of emendations are made? Is there a common "textual culture" that is reflected in common principles of editing - within or across different newspapers? And what is the interplay between the editorial work and the conditions of the writing environment at the various editorial offices: the number of editors, the volume of text written, the kind of editorial office (general or specialised), printed house rules for writing, opportunities for communication (meetings etc.)?The perspective of the investigation is text linguistic and pragmatic. The material (3608 emendations) has been analysed and classified in a data base on five different levels: information, text structure, word style, lexicogrammar, and typing, in comparison with emendations made by a group of teachers. A total of 157 co-workers connected with editorial offices participated: 36 reporters and 121 editors at the news and sports offices from 6 newspapers (1990-1991) with 510 news texts in 1347 versions. The results show that 72 % of all emendations serve to adapt the texts to a news text norm (information structure, text structure and word stylistic changes). Both in the organisation of information and the planning of texts, the editors' changes result in a strengthening of the journalistic text norm that can be discerned in the printed newspaper. In contrast to results stemming from editing performed by reviewers with more general linguistic ambitions (the teachers in the comparative material), what clearly dominate here are functional requirements placed on the texts. However, this also involves a local text norm, where different textual levels are prioritised differently at different editorial offices, even within the same newspaper. These differences can be tied to various social and institutional conditions controlling production (the kind of editorial office, the number of editors, etc.), as well as to communicative patterns within and between different editorial offices.