There was a story in the NY Observer a while ago about how profit sharing at the Dow Jones Corp. is coming to an end. Reporters' salaries at WSJ are not really competitive with NY Times or Washington Post, and the profit-share is supposed to make up the difference. Needless to say, this has stirred up some resentment among the Journal staff.
One disgruntled reporter was quoted as saying: "This is terrible... We're living our lead anecdotes."
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Henwood [SMTP:dhenwood at panix.com]
> Sent: Thursday, March 18, 1999 12:22 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Farewell to Oskar
>
> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> >Is the split between the editorial pages and the rest of the Wall
> Street
> >journal coming to an end? A couple of days ago, the front page once
> again
> >raised the issue that trees might be a cause of pollution.
>
> Not to defend mainstream journalistic practice too much, but there is
> a
> spectrum there. Not very wide, for sure, but reporters have their
> biases
> and try to work them into stories. That tree story was, in Journal
> parlance, an A-hed - the whimsical story at the center of the front
> page,
> so called because the rules around the headline look sort of like an
> A. So
> an A-hed on tree pollution could be read as, "Ha ha, that old loon
> Ronnie
> was right after all, ha ha." Ha ha.
>
> Another bit of Journalese - in the "leaders," the stories in the first
> and
> last columns on the front page - all have a "nut graf," the paragraph
> that's supposed to distill the moral of the story. If you put your
> pinkie
> on the byline and spread your fingers, your thumb should just about
> hit the
> nut graf. Individual experience may vary, depending on story and hand,
> but
> that's the formula.
>
> Doug