Day Three — Front Page Challenge

Nine newsroom denizens gathered in the editorial boardroom for today’s Front Page Challenge, a chance to look at how other papers are playing with their front page and to discuss what we might do with ours.
Roger Gillespie had prepared a powerpoint presentation highlighting the designs of the Bakersfield Californian, the Janesville Gazette, the Rockford Register Star, and the Dayton Daily News.
(If you have Powerpoint you can try downloading the slides here: Download frontpc.ppt (12556.0K)
The papers, all of which have undergone front page redesigns in the past year or three, varied widely on story and element count and in design philosophy.

We began with a look at the Californian’s use of the inverted ‘L’, a design element borrowed from late 90’s web pages and pioneered (and still done best) by Montreal’s La Presse. The inverted ‘L’ is a band of colour running up the left side of the paper and across the top, holding photo images and some short stories or “refers” (i.e. short story summaries pointing to a more fullsome story inside).  It has the effect of creating two zones on the page: the ‘L’ a kind of sell space and an inner, usually text heavy, page that almost pops right off the surface of the paper. It can be very effective when done well, but we noticed that they often abused or misused the ‘L’ , slapping any old content inside it, especially on inner pages.
The Janesville paper crowds as many as 19 - 20 elements on their front page, and runs a “Gazette at a Glance” double column of briefs down the right hand side of the page. They also list the names of that days Obits and Death Notices on the front page!
The Rockford Register Star candidly admitted to Roger and Jim that they had stolen many good ideas from us (including creating a “GO” section they named ... the Go section). They take the somewhat radical approach of NOT TURNING off the front page. What happens on A1 stays on A1. That doesn’t prevent them from refering the reader to an inside page with more stories on a related news item. There was some discussion about the benefits of that approach, but no clear consensus that anyone wanted to commit to that approach.
The Dayton Daily News attracted the most excitement and comments (ask Roger to show you some copies) because of some clear and simple design and a ferocious committment to the recom- mendations of the Northwestern Readership study. Roger explained that the paper re-examined, re-worked and re-posted all their beats, developed detailed beat descriptions that include a portrait of what readers they believe are interested in that beat’s work,  and then devoted 2 hours of small group training for each staffer to indoctrinate, er, expose them to the paper’s guiding philosophy. (“We don’t even have a news philosophy,” one person mumbled.) The paper’s committment to that reader-first philosophy is made manifest on the front page where, every day, they run a “box” containing pointers to “Talking Points” “Looking Out for You,” and “Did You Know” stories inside the paper. (All were identified in Readership Institute research as key reasons readers cite for opening their local papers.)
Inside, the Dayton crew (148 staff running a 130,000 circ paper), offered daily fine examples of non-traditional story telling, using maps or graphics or point form scatter shots of data instead of inch after inch of grey type. (Look for them later this week on our daily posts on Dana’s Glass wall).
There followed a rather intense discussion of how we can, as one person put it, follow Rule 10 of Elmore Leonards’ Ten Rules of Writing and “Leave out all the stuff readers tend to skip.”
Someone suggested running context or update boxes and pulling those boring obligitory background paragraphs from the story, but Mike Bennett warned that on some ongoing stories that just makes the problem more obvious, giving the example of the Bernardo trial where we used up 182 column inches by running the same info box on the Bernardo trial over and over and over and over and ... well, you get the idea.
We discussed the need, again, to resource any efforts to increse our daily output of non traditional story  style and I climbed up on one of my favourite hobby horses and advocated for the creation of a Reporter/Graphics position, where a willing reporter is trained in basic graphic creation software and as a GA reporter asked to tell stories daily using graphs and table and maps etc.  The discussion was far more lively and engaging than this poor report and we’ll hold another session - if time and interest permits - early next week, slotting it for the late afternoon so the evening shift can jump in with their boots on.
Bill D

Comments

[Denise Davy]

I don’t have a 15-inch steel-edged ruler like Paul Wilson but I have been here long enough to have heard the same ideas go around more than once.
Yes, we need to be more relevant to readers. We need to write tighter. And we need to put people back into our stories.
Sidebars and graphics, yes, yes, they’d help make the paper more reader friendly.
So here’s the question - if they’re such good ideas and they’ve been brought to the table time and time again, why aren’t we simply implementing them?
Maybe the problem is more about the process by which we deliver the news than the content (although that needs some tweaking, too.)
In other words, maybe we need to ask:
- how are stories being assigned?
- should we look at covering neighbourhoods rather than beats?
- how, at the end of the day, we can Maestro (remember that idea?) it all together to make sure there are sidebars and graphics in there?
- how much do we really welcome story ideas from all our reporters?
- how much are we pushing for people stories?
Tools and Training is working on bringing in a speaker to talk about writing short well. That’s a start.
But we also need to look at the process and how stories are being managed.
Now, for content.
1. Health.
We need more of it. According to Roger’s presentation, our target readers are boomers between 42 and 60 who think of themselves as 12 years younger, on average.
For most, health is a key issue. The Globe knows this and responded by setting up an entire page for health stories.
Joanna does a great job (in only three days!) of keeping us posted on new studies and she does it in a way that makes it relevant to readers. (read her recent story stating there’s more cancer and heart disease here than anywhere in Ontario).
We need more. If we’ve got more pages for local news, we should dedicate part of one of those pages to health stories.
2. Environment.
Many, many studies have stated the environment will be the most important issue of the next decade.
In Hamilton, land of soot-covered patio tables and high asthma rates, it’s an extremely inportant issue. We should respond with more stories that examine the pressing local environmental issues and show how readers are effected.
3. City Hall.
People count on us to tell them what’s going on down at the hall and how it matters to them.
It’s really difficult to dig into those stories with only one reporter. Nicole does her best but we need two sets of eyes to keep on top of the meetings and show our taxpayer/readers how those changes effect them.
4. Surprise us.
In addition to the regular menu of news, let’s throw in a few surprises. For example, for our poverty project what about a Diary of a Single mom, written by a local mom. Or stories written in a Q and A format. Or the occassional Vignette. Or a regular Facts and Arguments-style column by readers.
5. Move Paul Wilson back to the A section. It’s a fit.
6.Finally, read the content review report by Mary, Rob, Joan and Scott. It’s worth it.