Schouten becomes new formats editor at WSJ

Cory Schouten takes on an expanded role at The Wall Street Journal as new formats editor to oversee newsletters, calendars and other new formats.

In a message to the staff on Monday, editor of newsroom strategy Louise Story wrote:

There are many ways to provide useful information to our audiences outside of the traditional story structure, and this new team will be working with you all to try out and operationalize new platforms and formats that help people get the information they are seeking.

One of the formats in this group will be our newsletters. And Cory Schouten, who has led our newsletter revamp since the spring of 2018, is well positioned to lead the charge on more new formats. In just 18 months, Cory has helped our newsletters grow and improve in quality, and he has played a key role in launching the fast-growing Future of Everything, Grapevine and Women In and the Election + Business newsletters. Cory has helped us excel in part by fashioning newsletters as connective tissue for many of our digital initiatives and using them as a ground for experimentation.

In recent months, Cory has stepped up to lead our calendars initiative. The idea—that our readers could benefit from some content and news announcements in their calendars—fittingly came out of our Idea Portal, and since it came in, Cory has partnered with reporters and editors in the economics and politics teams to create News Calendars. Check them out here (Econ and Election).

Before Cory joined the Journal, he was an editor at the Columbia Journalism Review and the Indianapolis Business Journal. He led the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing as a board member and then president before completing the Knight-Bagehot fellowship at Columbia. He has won multiple SABEW awards for his editing and writing, including for investigative reporting and beat reporting.

Cory will be hiring for a few positions on his team. He’s looking for people who are excited about working with the broader newsroom to try out new formats. Please email him if you want to learn more.