Author
Roy Schwartz
The business mind behind Axios, who turned a newsroom writing style into a communication discipline for every leader and team.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Roy Schwartz is a media executive and a co-founder of Axios, the news company he launched in 2016 with journalists Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. Before Axios, he worked with both at Politico, where he served as chief revenue officer and ran the business side of a newsroom known for fast, tightly focused political coverage.
At Axios, Schwartz served as president and led the commercial side of the company while VandeHei and Allen shaped its editorial voice. The house format of short items, a sharp opening line, and bolded signposts such as "Why it matters" became the publication's trademark. Schwartz carried that format beyond journalism and helped build Axios HQ, a software product that applies the same approach to the way organizations communicate with their own people.
In 2022 the three founders set out the method in Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less. The book is written for anyone who writes for busy readers, including managers, communicators, founders and team leads. Its argument is that most professional writing is too long and too vague, and that a few repeatable habits can make it shorter, clearer and more likely to be read.
The signature
Schwartz treats brevity as an operating discipline for organizations, not a matter of personal taste. His particular angle is the inside of the company: the memo nobody finishes, the all-staff email that gets skimmed and forgotten, the update that buries the one decision people needed to hear. In his framing, unclear communication is a real cost. It wastes time, dilutes attention and erodes trust in leadership. Clarity, by contrast, is a form of respect for the reader.
The method he champions is deliberately simple and repeatable. Start with the single thing the reader must know. State plainly why it matters. Offer more detail only to those who choose to go deeper. That structure makes good communication teachable across a whole organization, so it no longer depends on a handful of naturally gifted writers.