This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next blog post is Monday, August 13.

Readers of TheMarioBlog are aware of how much importance I attach to newsletters and briefings. Readers crave them. Good publications craft them intelligently and as functional as possible.  The latest news about newsletters comes from The Wall Street Journal, not necessarily known for its most fun briefings and newsletters.

Until now.

There is a special team devoted to WSJ newsletters: they are Cory Schouten and Annemarie Dooling (formerly of CJR/Indianapolis Business Journal and Vox Media, respectively), who  joined the Journal’s newsletter team earlier this year and they embarked on the journey of analyzing the paper’s 126 newsletters.

I am happy to see that Cory Schouten is part of the team, as he was one of my Columbia University students.

I am particularly interested in the attention they are paying to The 10-point newsletter: among the highlights are to bring more of a “sense of whimsy” to The Wall Street Journal, to “surprise and to delight”.

The 10-Point newsletter

What is new about this newsletter:

1. It is a personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories of the day, tailored after the popular What’s News column that appears on Page One of the printed edition of the WSJ.
2. There are now 10 numbered points to give a sense of hierarchy to the most important WSJ stories of the day.
3. The paragraphs are briefer, easier to scan.
4. There is engagement via the Today’s Question and Answer.

I am going to be taking a look. The question here, as with any other newsletter is: how many of us will make this one, too, a part of our morning ritual. How many newsletters can a person subscribe to?

Read more:

http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/how-the-wall-street-journal-is-revamping-its-newsletters-and-trying-to-add-some-whimsy/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_campaign=9dbe4a44d5-dailylabemail3&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d68264fd5e-9dbe4a44d5-396144501

A cover we like

The New York Times’ Magazine, in its August 5 edition, has applied the lower case “m” in minimalism.

It’s all black.

The type is small.

The logo disappears, sort of.

But we are compelled to stop and look. That’s what it is all about. Take a look:

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