The ideal principle, which governs editing, is: 'never overestimate the public's knowledge and never underestimate the public's intelligence". In a news organization, editing plays a vital role. A news story is written by hurried reporters, and is rough-edged like raw diamond. Hence, the copy is polished and honed by a team of editors.

Thus, editing is done to achieve a balance of news between that originating within the organization and that pouring in from outside. Sorting out and sifting also helps induce parity between the well-written articles and those written by the inexperienced reporters. In the process, the unwanted matter gets weeded out. Only the newsworthy stories are finally selected. These are checked and rechecked for grammar, syntax, facts, figures, and sense and also clarified for betterment, and are condensed for economy of space.