ABSTRACT
If one views a 48-page newspaper or a 22-minute newscast from afar, it may seem like a bottomless well, with plenty of room for everything and with another opportunity tomorrow for material that cannot be included today. Closer up, however, editors stare at a grimmer reality: Every issue or program confronts finite, inflexible space and time boundaries that require editors to make constant, sometimes brutal priority decisions among volumes of material competing for inclusion. It is no exaggeration to say that a huge (and, to the audience, invisible) part of editing is deciding what not to publish.
