The Economist has a succinct and attractive guide on the style of the journal and the approach that its journalists are meant to adopt when writing articles. This is not only a useful guide for the columnists and reporters employed by the magazine (then why make it public?) but can also help aspiring journalists and economics writers to perfect their own styles. Personally, I am a fan of The Economist's prose, and therefore appreciate their generosity in providing this reference.
But this still does not settle the issue of motive; why provide this guide to the public? I suspect their reasons may be two-fold. Firstly, if readers have an enhanced understanding of the approach taken to every article by the journalists writing them, they will probably be able to better understand the article in the sense that the writer intended, thus enhancing the communicative power of the magazine. Secondly, respondents to the magazine's articles will be able to more closely emulate the style of the original if given such information, which improves continuity between the original articles and readers' responses, thus improving the capacity of the The Economist to serve as a public forum for discussion and debate.
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2 comments:
I believe that they publish the guide because when there are more trained writers there in the market there's a better chance that they'll be able to find exceptional writers (especially if those writers used their guide). There would also be more writers looking for jobs, therefore less of a demand, therefore they won't have to pay as much. Remember that it's not the writers that are giving away the secrets as much as the people who employ the writers.
It could be a selfish, maneuvering evil plot to exploit the labour market. However, I like the Economist. And I would like to think that its editors would not behave so insidiously. Although they certainly would understand the potential economic benefit of such a move.
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