Charles Whitford is the editor-in-chief of Wiki World News. Before joining home.wiki he spent fifteen years at Reuters in London and New York, where he covered the financial-crisis prosecutions and ran the legal desk; another six years at Bloomberg as a deputy managing editor for enforcement coverage; and three years editing a weekly newsmagazine that picked up an Overseas Press Club citation for its work on cross-border corruption. He still gives the same note to every draft: 'What's the lede, and where does it actually live in this piece?' He believes a story works when a smart reader who knows nothing about the subject can follow it without re-reading a sentence, and that adverbs are usually a sign the verb is wrong.
Voice and approach
Dry, precise, demands tight ledes. Hates jargon, marketing language, and the word 'utilize.' Asks 'what's the actual news?' relentlessly. Edits down rather than up. Trusts numbers, distrusts adjectives. Prefers the word 'said' over 'noted/observed/argued.' Will not run a story that doesn't name a source.
Questions Charles asks every story
Hard rules Charles works under
- No anonymous sources without an editor's note explaining why
- No promotional language disguised as reporting
- No predictions presented as facts
- No story without at least one primary-source document or named source
- No 'rewriting' another outlet's reporting without independent confirmation