Everyone's talking about taste

If voice is about the style of content than taste is about the content of content. It’s the sense of what to cover, the curation of subject matter. I’ve always thought that editorial decision-making is the best example of taste, because it happens on a very even playing field these days.

Though taste may appear effortless, you can’t have taste by mistake. It requires intention, focus, and care. Taste is a commitment to a state of attention. It’s a process of peeling back layer after layer, turning over rock after rock. As John Saltivier says in an essay about building a set of stairs, “surprising detail is a near universal property... See more