I’ve mentioned in several posts over recent weeks and months that we’re going to be experimenting with some new ways to cover the news, provide guidance in following the news and breaking down what I’ve called the ‘fourth wall’ of news. We’re going to start with what we’re calling ‘Editor’s Briefs’.
Let me stress this first: we’re going to roll these out over time, experimenting, improving as we go. The key point is we’re going to start slow and expand these new offerings as we go.
Editor’s Briefs are a simple concept. They are intended to be brief and informal. Put simply: we as editors have a different way of talking to each other about the news than we write for you when we’re writing news stories. That’s for a lot of good reasons. We’re immersed in the news as our full time jobs. We’re reporting the news for people with various different levels of background understanding of the news topics in question. We need to produce news articles in such a way that the significance of the subject matter is signaled in the way we write.
There are lots of good reasons why the journalism profession has evolved the format and genre of news writing as we have it today. But it does create a distance between how we discuss the news and understand it on our side and how we explain it to you. There are elements of the story that are more easily explained and broken down in a less formal manner. That’s what these Editor’s Brief are intended to do.
My idea for Editor’s Briefs came out of my experience working with my colleagues here at TPM. Since we cover lots of different stories at once and I don’t story edit myself, I frequently reach out to one of my editor colleagues over our internal office chat to give me a read out on the status of an evolving story. So late last week I might have asked for a read out of the latest Obamacare repeal push. Do we think it’s going to succeed? What’s the order of events next week? Who seems to be in play? What are key things we’re expecting next week? What are we hearing informally?
In those chats I’m looking to get quickly oriented not just on the state of play in this moment but the progress of events and what is coming down the pike. I need that because it’s a grounding that allows me to do my job and make editorial decisions myself. I want to make that on-going, unvarnished and more transparent read available to you as well. That’s the point and the goal.
Obviously, there are some differences. We can’t report unconfirmed facts. We can’t discuss source confidences publicly. But these are issues at the margins. Most of what we know we can share. It’s quick, informal and allows us to share perspectives, guidance and details that just don’t fit into the confines of conventional article write ups.
As I said, we’ll start slowly and as news dictates. For now I wanted to share the concept and let you know why we’re doing it.
