Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
As the NPR Ethics Handbook states, the Standards & Practices editor is "charged with cultivating an ethical culture throughout our news operation." This means he or she coordinates discussion on how we apply our principles and monitors our decision-making practices to ensure we're living up to our standards."
Before becoming Standards & Practices editor, Memmott was one of the hosts of NPR's "The Two-Way" news blog, which he helped to launch when he came to NPR in 2009. It focused on breaking news, analysis, and the most compelling stories being reported by NPR News and other news media.
Prior to joining NPR, Memmott worked for nearly 25 years as a reporter and editor at USA Today. He focused on a range of coverage from politics, foreign affairs, economics, and the media. He reported from places across the United States and the world, including half a dozen trips to Afghanistan in 2002-2003.
During his time at USA Today, Memmott, helped launch and lead three USAToday.com news blogs: "On Deadline," "The Oval" and "On Politics," the site's 2008 presidential campaign blog.
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Several thousand people sent NPR examples of their favorite eggcorns — words or phrases that are mistakenly used but still make some sense. We read them all and picked some of the best. -
An eggcorn is a word or phrase that isn't right, but makes some sense. It's among more than 1,700 words Merriam-Webster just added to its dictionary. What are your favorite eggcorns?
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Hundreds of people died this month when an overloaded ship sank in the Mediterranean Sea. They were on the move, but never reached their destinations. -
Though investigators say it looks like the co-pilot deliberately brought down the jet, killing himself and 149 others, there are reasons not to use that word.
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When NPR correspondents report about that group, they try to make it clear that it is not a "state" in the standard sense of that word. This month's "Word Matters" conversation explains why. -
News organizations, including NPR, support the satirical magazine's right to be offensive. But mainstream news outlets also avoid publishing such material. -
NPR's audience submitted more than 270 nominees for "most misused word or phrase." No. 1: Using "me" when it should be "I," or "I" when it should be "me." Can you use them correctly? Try our quiz. -
It's a divisive topic. Were you taught that it should be "10 items or fewer?" That would make "10 items or less" a glaring grammatical error. -
NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Standards and Practices Editor Mark Memmott about the language NPR uses and why.
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As he prepares to take on a new role at NPR after nearly five years with The Two-Way, Mark Memmott wants to say, "See you later."
