Hieroglyphics Represent the Next Step

Would you like a sidebar or political analyst with that order?
The Cleveland Plain-Dealer wants columnists to write at a fifth grade level based on the Flesch-Kincaid test.
Money quote:

The memo says she wrote about Dennis Kucinich at a level appropriate for high school seniors, or subscribers to The New York Times.

The editors at the Plain-Dealer believe columnists can be effective when using words that a fifth grader can understand. The declining circulation numbers take the form of the 800-pound elephant that no one wants to discuss. The newspaper’s memo hints that readers will respond to those super great stories written for a fifth grader. If the paper’s writers can hit that level, the circulation will at least level off if not improve. If that apporach does not work, they can always try pictograms or hieroglyphics.

The memo’s author is correct up to a point. Good stories can be communicated in a concise fashion. Indeed, every writer no matter the forum must strive for conciseness.

The Plain Dealer, we suspect, wants to sacrifice complexity for simplicity.

At Blipverts, we shun the New York Times because the writing is not very good. Many of the articles are over simplified and lack sophistication about the topic. The Wall Street Journal, pre-Murdoch ownership days, wrote terrific page one stories that routinely demonstrated why newspapers as a medium are better suited for story telling compared to other media. By no coincidence, the Wall Street Journal sat a top the newspaper sales chart for years.

USA Today and its accompanying fifth grade level stories nipped at the Journal’s heals. However, USA Today maintained this feat because they gave away the paper. No consumer wanted to pay for USA Today because the paper provided no value. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal charged a premium for its complex and dense stories.

This lesson appears lost on the higher ups at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Wall Street Journal’s overlord.