Every journalist needs to imagine a reader, someone to tell the story to. Of course, we all want many, many readers but keeping at least one person in mind during the writing process can help keep engaging prose from veering toward boilerplate.

If you work for a local newspaper, your reader is probably from the city where your publication circulates. If your newspaper is national in scope, your reader could be living in New York or Los Angeles or anywhere in between. Your reader — or listener or viewer — may be professional or working class, worldly or parochial, retired or hipster. As you mull whom you write for, it is worth considering this question:

What is the race of your reader?