November 19, 2004 | Shorter WaPo

This guy just told Milbank, Pincus, O'Harrow and Priest to write shorter stories.

Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. (that guy), also promoted Philip Bennett, assistant managing editor for foreign news to the paper's No. 2 position earlier this month.

In an effort to win new readers, Downie said Post reporters will be required to write shorter stories. The paper's design and copy editors will be given more authority to make room for more photographs and graphics.

The paper will undergo a redesign to make it easier for readers to find stories. It is considering filling the left-hand column of the front page with keys to stories elsewhere in the paper and other information readers say they want from the paper, which they often consider "too often too dull," Downie said.

"Newspapers should be fun and it should be fun to work at one," Bennett said.

That's according to Frank Ahrens story in the Washington Post today.

Ahrens would have added that Downie and Bennett's drive to turn the best newspaper in the country into a tabloid with pop-up diagrams and scratch-and-sniff restaurant reviews comes at a particulalry precipitous moment for journalism and the country, but his piece was edited for length by a copy editor, who, to Bennett's credit, was definitely having a lot of fun at work yesterday.

Posted by Ryan Singel at November 19, 2004 02:49 PM

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