Why Amy Stevens of Reuters is such a great editor

Amy Stevens of Reuters received the Minard Award for editing at the Gerald Loeb Awards ceremony in New York on Tuesday.

Here are the opening remarks by Reuters editor in chief Steve Adler about Stevens:

Amy Stevens could have been a high-priced lawyer. Or – having won the coveted Wallace Prize for creative writing at Yale – a low paid fiction writer. Fortunately, she picked a third way — and became a journalist. Her graceful writing, of course, quickly came in handy. But so did her law degree — to the great benefit of both law and journalism.

I’m thrilled to be introducing her as the 2016 Lawrence Minard Award winner, given to a business editor whose work does not receive a byline or whose face does not appear on the air for the work covered. In other words, the brains behind the story.

As a reporter and then as an editor for the past couple of decades, Amy is a model of how smart, sophisticated, and elegant journalism can be done for both niche readers and for general audiences – in her case simultaneously. As much as anyone, Amy has blurred if not obliterated the line between trade and non-trade journalism by telling complicated stories clearly, beautifully and authoritatively.

Senior editors at the Wall Street Journal weren’t especially enthusiastic back in 1988 when Norm Pearlstine unveiled a law page aimed at both legal and business readers. It was Amy’s brilliant column on the interplay between lawyers and clients that showed editors and readers that legal journalism was actually business journalism because law is actually a business – and that as businesses go, it is rich in powerful stories with important implications. She wrote about a lawyer who billed clients for hundreds of hours a week; of clients’ backlash against excessive lawyers’ fees; of the disenchantment of young associates at giant firms; and of the exponential growth and questionable behavior of the financial class-action bar.

One of my favorite of her legal stories from her pre-editing days was about Milli Vanilli. Remember them? Amy reported behind the scenes of class-action lawsuits over revelations that the R&B duo had been lip-syncing their songs. She hilariously but pointedly exposed how plaintiffs’ lawyers were lining up so-called victims among disillusioned teen-age fans and feuding among themselves over potential mega-fees. Like so much of her work as a reporter and editor, it was legally astute, smart, accessible and pretty darn edgy.

Amy got to leverage these compelling characteristics over many more stories from many more journalists when she moved into editing in the mid-‘90s. She lost her byline but gained even more of a voice in developing talent and shaping stories – first as a Journal editor on Page One and the Weekend section, then at Conde Nast Portfolio, and most recently at Reuters.

Over the past five years, as Reuters Executive Editor for Professional News, Amy has built a team that provides essential news for the company’s legal clients at Westlaw and insightful, accessible legal coverage for financial and media clients – once again blending niche and general-interest journalism with intelligence and style.

Her work at Reuters – as in her previous editing roles — gets no external credit.

It’s her colleagues who understand the value of what she does. And they are lavish in their appreciation. Joanne Lipman, with whom Amy worked at The Journal and Portfolio, describes her editing this way: “Amy simply worked magic with copy…she could take virtually any story and spin it into gold.” Amy’s work puts Paul Steiger in a musical mood: “Amy showed reporters the way to make their stories and their headlines sing like so many nightingales and opera sopranos,’ Paul says. Or warbles.

One of the great writers whom Amy has edited – Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Golden – explains why so many reporters clamor to get their copy in her hands: “In my 35 years at The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Conde Nast Portfolio and Bloomberg News,” Dan says, “Amy is the single best editor I have ever worked with. She is equally adept at conceptualizing stories, identifying holes in reporting or analysis, and burnishing prose. She is a perfectionist in the best sense of the word.”

Amy is a motivator, mentor, wordsmith, and… perfectionist. And the well-deserving 2016 Minard Award winner. .