Categories: OLD Media Moves

Byline crackdown at WSJ?

Editors and reporters at The Wall Street Journal were told this week that stories should rarely carry more than two bylines, reports Capital New York’s Joe Pompeo.

Pompeo writes, “Wall Street Journal gossip has it that Murdoch himself thought there were too many triple bylines in the paper; one frustrated insider griped that ‘reporting is one of those underpaid jobs you do for the love and the glory. I fear reporters will be less willing to collaborate, with uncertainty over whether they get credited.’

“A Journal rep told Capital ‘there is no ban on 3-bylines at the Journal.’ (Indeed, both A1 and C1 carried triple bylines Wednesday.) ‘We always appropriately credit our reporters while ensuring reporting resources are well deployed.’

“The spokesperson didn’t respond to a follow-up asking whether the apparent crackdown, as described to Capital, was perhaps more of an informal guideline.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.