ENTRIES TAGGED "Markus Dohle"

Penguin Random House: Parsing the messages

Using a word cloud to get a better sense of what the executives are emphasizing

Word clouds offer a different way of viewing a document. Sometimes they shed more light on what the author is really emphasizing. You’ve probably already read the merger messages sent by Random House’s Markus Dohle and Penguin’s John Makinson. I’m sure each of those letters were edited by quite a few people before they were sent. They’ve been scoured and polished till just the right message was communicated.

So what do they look like in word cloud view? I spliced the two documents together and the result is shown below.

It’s not surprising that much of the emphasis is on the “company” and its name. Look a bit closer and you’ll also see that “authors” also appears frequently. What about “digital” though? It’s there…you just have to look closely. Very closely.