Two of the best newspapers in the world, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, produce internal publications that critique their own work and provide unique insight into their newspapers. Both companies publish these newsletters online for everyone to read.
Here’s a brief look at the publications and how to find them.
Style & Substance
The Wall Street Journal just recently began publishing its Style & Substance newsletter online.
Each month, Style & Substance editor Paul R. Martin distributes his newsletter to the newspaper’s staff, critiquing the Journal‘s news pages on language and other issues.
Each issue also notes stylistic and other updates to the “The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Business Style and Usage” (available for purchase online). And perhaps most fun, the newsletter includes a quiz asking readers to “find the flubs” that appeared in the Journal.
Among the recent subjects tackled in the newsletter: misuse of hyphens, style trends, computer “mice” versus “mouses,” and “dangler kudzu.”
Now the newsletter is being made available to the public on WSJ.com at wsj.com/stylememo. It’s a great resource for journalists to get insight into the inner workings of The Wall Street Journal and get style tips.
Times Talk
Times Talk is The New York Times’ internal quarterly newsletter, which is also available for anyone to read online.
The publication offers an interesting behind-the-scenes look at The New York Times. Among the topics covered recently: redesign efforts at the newspaper, focusing on the new Travel section and Book Review; how many trees die to produce one issue of The New York Times (1,800); and a look at the Public Editor’s first year on the job, with a fun quiz in which you much match responses from editors, reporters and the office of the public editor with the actual readers’ queries.
You can read issues going as far back as March 2002 on The New York Times Company’s corporate site at www.nytco.com/company-timestalk.html
SUBMIT YOUR TIPS
Send your favorites sites and tip suggestions to poynter (at) jondube.com.
JON’S LINKS:
