To illustrate some of my editing process, this is an unedited version of a Southwest News Media article about a local school district struggling with year after year of falling enrollment.

Here's the finished version of the same article. The lede is simplified and emphasizes the impact of the story: that the enrollment trend isn't turning around and a school might close as a result. We need to quickly hear from the people affected — district leaders, teachers and families — so I put a brief rundown of these different perspectives early in the story. Much of the rest of the article is also reorganized or reordered for a clearer and more manageable train of thought. I might make a few other changes today, but under deadline pressure and with multiple other articles to juggle, this one still comes out much stronger.