How to Improve 'Times' Writing: A Novella
Timesman Rick Berke was promoted in January to become the paper's assistant managing editor for news. In that capacity, as Bill Keller noted in the memo announcing the move, Berke would count among his duties supervising "a serious conversation about the quality of writing at the paper." So, pray tell, what do you think would increase the quality of writing in the Times? We'd suggest starting with the lengths of stories — and Berke says he agrees. Which is why it's quite so amusing that the first fruits of that "serious discussion" — released at the very end of the day Friday, which a serious newsman like Berke would no doubt find a curious time for a major organization to be releasing information — is a memo that runs to 29 pages (including the lovely MSWord-designed cover, above right).
After the jump, the one-page cover note to the 29-page memo. And then the full memo — PDFed for your convenience — is here.
From:
To: newsroom@nytimes.com
Sent: Fri, 5 May 2006 17:17:20 -0400
Subject: A Note from Rick Berke
To The Staff:
We are embarking on a newsroomwide effort to make the best-written newspaper even better written.
The effort began with an exercise last November, when Bill and Jill and I asked an assortment of reporters and editors to examine the writing in every Page One article over a 10-day period and to then file a memo. (We will focus on writing throughout the paper, but figured that A-1 is a good place to start, and most of the same lessons apply.)
The results (in memos excerpted below) were loud and clear: While The Times is a daily showcase of amazing writing, we can do even better. Some of the memos are particularly short because we excised some direct critiques.
We hope that these observations will be enlightening and encourage everyone to think more about writing. From all the different perspectives, the following themes emerged from the memos:
— We have too many anecdotal leads and often don't think creatively about other approaches.
— Stories don't get to the point soon enough, and they run on too long.
— We pack too much material into ledes.
— We often don't lace breaking news stories with enough drama or sense of the moment.
As Bill Keller said of these memos: "One of the most salient points that people made was that we have this habit of saving the good writing for the features, whereas most of what we do is news stories, and people don't feel the same obligation or desire to write those stories. Those are the stories, you've got them by the throat most of the time because news happens. Something blew up, something happened. Those are the stories where we really need the writing most. I'd like a lot more unorthodox approaches to conventional news stories."
We know it's not always possible to meet these goals. First, there are deadline pressures. Second, there are the interminable demands from editors about making sure certain points are moved higher. Then there are the demands that articles be cut.
But the central point is that writing does matter. We see these memos as a starting point. We will continue this conversation during lunches we are having with editors and reporters throughout the paper.
In the meantime, take a look at these memos, which offer eye-opening insights and wise tips about framing stories.
Rick
