Investigative reporter Nina Bernstein shared The New York Times' editing rules as seen by the reporters who had to put up with them.
That "Mysterious second reference" is delightful!
Here's something similar I wrote when I started out in journalism in the late 1990s: 'Newsroom rules for editors.'
1. Rewrite concise ledes as rambling 40-word dirges.
2. Convert half the periods in any given story into commas. Convert commas at random into periods.
3. Rewrite original and unconventional prose. Strip text of invention. When challenged, tell your reporters to read Strunk and White.
4. When rewriting, on no account pause to check the results for subject-verb agreement, clause dependencies, or other typical results of editing text with computers.
5. Never concern yourself with tense, or how many of them there should be in a single sentence.
6. Correct pronoun references are optional. Improper usage amounts to stylistic je ne sais quoi and keeps barbarians from the gates.
7. Don't let them write English but that eighth-graders can read, or you'll be here all night.
8. Never cite your editorial preferences. Like the Bible, the sources are never read anyway.
