“You were by far the toughest editor I've ever had in my 20 years of working as a journalist, to the point that I sometimes felt like throwing all my writing against the wall. It's been a great learning experience watching you sift through the words and uncover the hidden rifts in a narrative, shatter a structure, and scramble it back together in a more logical fashion. Thank you for sharpening my eye and for helping me become a better journalist.”

Vera SprothenWSJ reporter

“What more can I say about your wonderful lessons and tips? Simply awesome and awakening really. I was desperately looking for some guidance and thank God you came to my rescue. Sure I need more practice but, at least I know how to shape and structure market stories in meaningful/clear ways now.”

PVAsia reporter

“It was great working with you over the last couple of weeks. This is the first time an editor has taken time to carefully dissect our writing and talk constructively about remodelling dry wire-style coverage into better stories for the Journal. What really helped was understanding the need for clarity, simplicity and storytelling, the importance of identifying “quirky” aspects of our beats, and making a strong pitch for a story. Looking forward to working on more stories with you.”

EYAsia reporter

“As a newcomer to the Journal, I’ve spent the first few months figuring out what does and doesn’t work as a WSJ story. I was probably about 80% of the way there, but the training has helped me, more or less, to complete that process. Specifically, the value was in having the essence of what turns a decent story into a great story properly spelled out. Things like having well-crafted ledes that marry news and perspective; where possible using human characters to narrate the story; dramatising seemingly dry material; zooming in and out between granular news detail and wider context. These techniques maybe weren’t new to me, but I feel I’ve got a much firmer grasp of them now that they’ve been properly articulated. I think I can bring more refinement and flair to my stories having done the training.”

TMAsia reporter

“It was really the most useful of all the training I’ve received at this company! While the group session was helpful to understand the ideas, it’s most useful to actually work together in crafting a lede. It was a great learning experience when you went through my story and told me where my lede was weak and which paragraphs I could leave out. Your advice on how to give interviews to make the interviewee speak in plain language and beyond the jargon was also very good. Overall, your lessons were a really good exercise to reflect on my writing habits. To be honest, I’d never felt so embarrassed reading my own writing!”

KIAsia reporter

“The training has helped me to focus better on getting the lead paragraph right by asking myself questions like, "what are the facts," and "who does it affect," "what’s the context," and "why should it concern the potential reader." I applied it to this article I wrote last week, and I’m pleased it was published with fewer major edits than my previous work.”

ECAsia reporter

“I found your input quite interesting and helpful, especially our discussion about the importance of having an overarching narrative to shape stories, drive questions and push the file forward. I had never really thought about it quite in those terms. I was also encouraged to hear that as an organisation we are aspiring to a much higher, more consistent standard of writing and editing than has been the case in the past.”

PBAsia editor

“I really appreciated your feedback on my Aheds. The most important part of it was having someone really push me to think through exactly what the argument I was trying to make in my story is. It's hard work, and takes a lot of brain power. But I'm glad we did it, because it will make my stories a lot better.”

JCAsia reporter

“I found editing stories with you very helpful. It was a great introduction to some new editing tools and made it easier to understand a lot of the principles you were talking about.”

ASAsia editor