The Washington Post Wants to Give Its Articles a Trim

It's an exercise in better writing.

In both print and online, The Washington Post has been asking staff to give a critical eye to articles that take up more than 50 inches of print or go over 1,500 words online, with the aim of slimming them down.

The reason, as Washington Post managing editor Cameron Barr explained to Poynter’s Benjamin Mullin, is to get writers to give a piece the length it deserves, and not more. “We were seeing too many pieces that were in the mid-range of their ambition and their success—coming in at 60, 70 inches of copy,” Barr told Mullin.

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