URN Reporters Brian Luwaga and Emmanuel Kajubu took up the editorial mantle and succeeded to sniff and weed out the chaff that keeps crawling into the stories.
The statements in bold appeared in stories filed over the past two weeks.

Emmanuel Kajubu, URN’s Bureau Chief in Fort-Portal took the editors surgical tools and made the following operation;

These are my comments, if i was an editor.
Fire gutted down … The statement should have read, Fire gutted. Not everything
that is gutted by fire goes down.
• Good worth unspecified amount of money …the amount of money should be included.
• Speaking to journalists in a conversation …speaking and conversing have the
same meaning.
• Luggage being transported inside the bus boots … Buses don’t wear boots. The correct statement should have been luggage transported in the cabin or boot of the bus.
• In a suite filed by …suites are rooms in big hotels while a legal suit is
filed against someone in a court of law.
• Buses are being modified to curry goods …It should be carry goods. Curry
means sauce cooked with spices.
• Congolese soldiers waylaid a roadblock …It should have read, Congolese
soldiers were waylaid at a roadblock. Actually the correct statement should have been they staged a roadblock. A roadblock is staged or mounted but not made or waylaid.
• Electricity electrocuted one …There is no need to include electricity because
electrocuted means to be killed by electricity.
• In his urology …urology means surgery done on the male and female urinary
tracts. I think the reporter meant Eulogy which is a speech praising a deceased
person.
• A section of members of the opposition … a section means something that has
been divided into parts. The statement should have read: some members of the
opposition.

Brian Luwaga, URNs Bureau chief in Luweero entered the editorial suite and made the following observations
Repeations, misspelled and misplacement of words for example;

• Speaking to journalists in conversation – speaking to/conversation means the same.
• A section of members of opposition – i dont think the word section applies to human beings.

“On the reporter side, I think there is rush to submit stories and we need to double check our stories for number times and answer the questions that may arise from the readers,” said Brian.

Kudos to Emmanuel and Brian. Their  efforts show that each of us has a potential to make our stories cleaner if only we can pick the passion to learn something, read something and challenge ourselves to achieve the best. In writing as in reporting, the challenge  is to take  try as much as possible to sniff out the chaff and take on different eyes to see the words from different perspectives.

One more  statement is the way we continue to use or misuse the word Accused. We are accused of failing to read the URN digests to improve our writing. We are not accused for.

Story Ideas
Recently I posted a story on Hospital infections in African hospitals; these are infections that are acquired from hospitals. A patient goes in the hospital with one disease and comes out with another or two. I thought this was interesting enough to stir interest. Take a visit to the hospital and find out the state in terms of hygiene, water access, and food preparation. Look at the water sources for the patient…is the water treated? Is it clean water? What are the patient’s concerns? They are sleeping on floors, what infections are they being exposed to?

Can we track a patient who acquired an infection from the hospital? Such a patient could give context to your story.

Talk to the doctors and find out the trends in hospital infections? Have there been any significant changes over the past five years? What is being done to contain the infections? and at what cost?

Quote of the Week
Journalism is organized gossip