Who Is Our Target Audience

Years ago I learned a very valuable lesson while attending a writing seminar. At the time I was writing for a medium-sized newspaper and the first question the speaker asked us was “who is your target audience.” As he polled the class he received the typical answers. The magazine readers, newspaper readers, or more detailed as in women, men, tradesmen, and so on. At each answer the instructor shook his head and said nope. He said your audience is your editor. Your editors audience is all those other folks.

I found that my writing was much more fluent and I was more productive when, within the guidelines of good writing, I focused on what the editor wanted. Keep sentences active, don’t back into a sentence, keep the construction logical, draw effective word pictures, and the best advice of all, give the reader a break. Don’t make it a struggle to understand and get the point and if you don’t have a point, stop writing and go get one. Let the editor worry about the article’s reception.

This advice had two immediate benefits. Audience evaluation became much easier and it allowed me to focus on the individual who had the most direct impact on my employment, my editor.