JonahKeri.com

Working at Investor’s Business Daily for nine years has taught me the value of brevity. IBD’s editors press the writers to produce “Flesch” scores of 60 or higher for every article. The Flesch is a number that pops up after you spellcheck an article on Word (Tools - Options - Spelling & Grammar - Show Readability Statistics). To get a high Flesch score, avoid polysyllabic long words. Also, write short sentences and paragraphs.

The idea isn’t to save newsprint per se. Rather it’s to make your writing more accessible to a wider range of people. A 60 Flesch score means an average 6th grader can understand what you’re writing; a 40 might require a college education.

I bring this up because the COO of Tribune Co. has decided to measure writer productivity by counting the number of words each one uses. So basically if I want to get a promotion at a Trib paper, all I need to do is spend 1,000 words making a point I could otherwise make in 50.

Blech. (An article consisting only of the word “Blech” earns a highest-possible score of 100, fyi.)