At a time when struggling news organizations are outsourcing copy editors and slashing copy desks, the Associated Press Stylebook is maintaining its place in newsrooms and is steadily growing its audience — online and in print.
Sales for the AP Stylebook have increased significantly in recent years, from 30,000 in 2004 to 60,000 in 2008. Traffic on the AP Stylebook Web site, which was redesigned last month, is also growing. Monthly page views are at 300,000 — a 3 to 4 percent increase from before the redesign and a 6.5 percent increase from last year. There’s talk, too, about a mobile version of the style guide being released this summer.
Though its primary audience remains journalists and college students, some at the AP suspect that former journalists are using the style guide in their new jobs and introducing it to professionals in different industries.
“Even though journalists have known about and loved the Stylebook for decades now, there are still new people discovering it,” said Colleen Newvine, head of market research for the AP and product manager for the Stylebook. “It’s not just newsrooms using it; it’s bloggers, it’s public relations people, its government agencies.”
Darrell Christian, editor at large at the Associated Press and one of three AP Stylebook editors, said that journalists continue to be the guide’s primary audience. “That said, of course, the Stylebook is used by many public relations companies and followed by them. And I think the basics of our style are followed by most government agencies and other businesses.”
Part of the APStylebook.com‘s redesign involved figuring out how to reach new audiences and accommodate journalists who have changed roles, said Chris Cohick, who manages the site.
One of the site’s new features, for instance, is an audio pronunciation guide that could be of particular importance to print journalists who are now doing multimedia and broadcast-related work.
Members of AP’s broadcast department recorded a list of more than 33 difficult-to-pronounce words, most of which are proper nouns, for the guide. The list includes Dmitri Medvedev (dih-MEE’-tree med-VEHD’-ev), al qaida (al-KY’-ee-duh) and even Kanye West (KAHN’-yay) and Beyonce Knowles (bee-AHN’-say).
“People who may have traditionally had a print background may now be doing online video and audio files,” Newvine said. “There may be broadcast journalists who have a need for more AP Stylebook guidance as more of those traditional lines blur.”
Other new features on the site, which is subscription-based, include a revamped version of “Ask the Editor,” which averages 12,000 page views per month. Previously, questions and answers were clumped together. Now, they’re organized by categories such as abbreviations/acronyms, dates/time periods, geography and sports.
“You could do a control F and try and search for something, but it was just hundreds upon hundreds of questions in this big long list,” Newvine said. “If someone has already asked your question, it’s easier now to find that question rather than having to ask it from scratch.”
The new site also features business sector information, which includes major companies’ revenue, net income, size and business description and market capitalization. The data, which Capital IQ provides, will be regularly updated, Newvine said.
Twitter is another recent addition to the style guide’s online presence, serving as a new outlet for communication between AP editors and Stylebook users.
Newvine, who runs the account, often responds to Tweets and refers questions and suggestions to the AP Stylebook editors for consideration. When “Tweet” appeared with an uppercase “T” in the 2009 AP Stylebook, she followed along as people tweeted their disapproval.
Christian said the capitalization was the result of a typographical error and that it was originally supposed to be lowercased. Still, the Stylebook editors met and then decided to issue an official change, which it notified online subscribers about via e-mail on Monday.
“Twitter is a real new phenomenon for input to the Stylebook,” Christian said. “More and more, we get suggestions and criticisms on Twitter instead of e-mail.”
Christian noted that style, while consistent, is not immune to change or debate. Entries that have political undertones are often the biggest point of contention. Disagreements, for instance, are common over whether “illegal immigrant” should be changed to “undocumented aliens,” or whether “assisted suicide” should be changed to “death with dignity.”
Growing an audience for the Stylebook, Christian said, has a lot to do with responding to these disagreements via tweets, e-mails and “Ask the Editor” inquiries, or by making changes to the print edition, which is updated yearly. Though the print version continues to sell well, Christian sees even greater potential in the Stylebook’s Web presence.
“We’re moving more and more to an online product,” Christian said. “The print book is still popular, but there’s much more material available on the online version. I could see a time down the road when it’s almost exclusively an online product.”
