Hate it or love it: the redesign that's here to stay

Last week I watched this video on the Tribune's Web site about their redesign and their reasoning of why they did what they did. The video says that they "were given the mandate to make the paper much bolder, more colorful." The paper is supposed to bring the newspaper into the 21st century, with smarter and better editing, more visual story telling and more stories that affect the reader.

This video tries to cover up the fact that the paper is and has been downsizing and mentions nothing about the reduction of the physical size of the broadsheet. Like we learned in lecture, this is something that a lot of people have lost their jobs over and many people are going to think that this is the 'dumbing down' of the newspaper to try to salvage what is left of the declining industry. But as much as the editors were beat up on Chicago Tonight, the Trib's redesign is not that drastic compared to what is going on in newspapers throughout the country.

This summer, I went to a workshop about alternative story forms (or ASFs), which introduced many of the concepts the Tribune is using in their redesign. An ASF is meant to tell the story in a way that is clear, edited tightly and in a way that the reader is able to take something from it immediately, as opposed to reading a 20-inch story about the same thing.

Some people may not like the idea of an ASF because they think it is 'dumbing down' the newspaper. But it's in fact, the opposite. When editing an ASF, everything has to be tight. The only facts and quotes that get through are the ones with importance. It really is editing for the reader. I don't want to say that editing for an ASF is tougher than editing for a regular story, but there is no doubt that it takes skill to edit a story in that way.

The page at the top of this post is Tuesday's front page from the Sun Sentinel from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. The entire front page is devoted to the bailout problem we saw on Monday. The graphic on the top explains what happened throughout the day on Wall Street and the text is a Q & A about what this really means. Both of these are techniques presented at the workshop I attended and I think both of them work well. It may not have as much news as a typical front page, but it does attack the questions that were on everyone's minds Tuesday morning.

The Tribune may receive a lot of criticism about their new look, but it is nothing groundbreaking. Some people may not like the idea of ASFs, but the truth is that it they make the paper look better and this is the way a lot of newspapers are now trying to present information. For these reasons, I think the redesign of the Tribune is going to be here to stay.

The importance of transparency

I was reading an article tonight ( http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-greenest-person-0923_qsep23,0,6678000.story )about the greenest man in Chicago. Ken Dunn is considered the person in Chicago with the smallest carbon footprint.

Sounds great. But how on Earth can something like that be determined out of the three million plus people (including suburbs) that live near Chicago?

In the online story, there are two accompanying links: How we did it and How to be green.

The how we did it was the one that caught my eye.

The Tribune says it asked local green groups for people that are living green lives, only focused on personal lives for calculations and then used a Web site to calculate the amount of carbon these people produced. The people then submitted shopping and energy use information to the Tribune.

I think the most important part of this story is that the Tribune was transparent in telling the reader how this particular person won the title. Maybe there was a better way to find the greenest person, but I think that by telling the reader how it was done, it makes the story more credible by ensuring the reader that this person was not arbitrarily chosen.

This lesson can be learned for other news stories. Not every story has to contain a link to 150 more words describing how it was reported. But for stories where the reader would be left with unanswered questions, I do not think it is a bad idea to add a link to how the story was reported as well as the reporters involvement with sources.

In a time when people seem to not trust the news and reporters' credibility, transparency is a way to fight that stereotype.

News value in photos of people with puppies

When I was on the News Gazette Web site tonight, this caught my eye:


http://news-gazette.com/scene/gallery/505

In case you are not familiar with it, the News Gazette makes photo galleries from time to time of people posing at community events. I've seen this section before, but I got to thinking about it tonight. Why are pictures of people posing with their dachshunds appropriate to put on a news site.

I see both sides to this argument. The truth is, 30 snapshots of people with their dogs at a festival doesn't fit the traditional definition of news. It's not going to win a Pulitzer or considered a work of great journalism. It's something to look at and probably won't have much of an effect on the viewer.

Or will it?

I love dogs and that small thumbnail photo at the bottom of the page attracted my attention (and I looked through the whole album). But if I were one of those people at Daschiefest 2008, I know I would be drawn to the News Gazette site to see if my face made it to the Web. And if it did, I would probably show my family and friends. And then they would all go to the site, too. And then suddenly, the news site has more traffic and maybe they click on one of the other articles and learn about something else the paper produced. Suddenly, the simple photo effected the viewer, even if in a small way.

In a time with budget cuts and layoffs in all parts of the industry, we have to learn to adapt. We have to learn what the people want and give it to them. If posting pictures of locals at events is the way to draw people to a site, then so be it.

Writing a headline that's interesting, but true?

In a Chicago Tribune article (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-fermilab-explainer_bd07sep07,0,1577860.story) from Sunday, Sept. 7, the headline reads,

"Why the earth could actually end when the new collider fires up"

This headline is meant to catch the readers attention — and it did for me. The article goes through to explain how a new particle accelerator may be strong enough to form tiny black holes. Some fear that the black holes will multiply, creating a bigger black hole that could swallow the earth. But it's not probable, scientists say.

By reading the headline, it sounds like the earth will be pending some sort of doom this week. After reading through the entire article, it's clear that the world will still exist after the collider starts. But is it right to have a headline like that when pending doom is not true?

For this particular story, I think it is OK because the entire story has a slightly relaxed tone.
It has lines like: "The most far-out fear is that the device's little black holes could blossom into big ones, with gravity so strong that they swallow first the collider, then the Swiss-French countryside, then the Earth as a whole. Burp."

And also: "If the collider does manage to produce tiny, short-lived black holes, most physicists think that would be . . . pretty sweet, actually."

The headline serves its purpose in getting the reader interested in the subject. I think that is more important than telling the reader exactly what is in the story, because then the reader actually has to read the text to understand.

Rewriting a headline that doesn't say much

The lead headline on Tuesday, Sept. 2 sport's front reads, "Rivalry shows teams ability," with the subhead reading, "In spite of loss, game was night of firsts for Illini."

The headline is not specific and will not draw the reader into the story. I think the subhead is better than the headline, but I think both could use work. By saying words like "team" and "Illini," the reader would have no idea what the story was about if it were not for the photo directly to the right of the headline. The space given for the headline would be difficult to work with, since it has large text in two columns to work with. I think switching the ideas of the headline and subhead may have worked better.

For the headline, I would have tried something like, "Not all lost in football's defeat," and changed the subhead to refer to the rivalry and more opportunities with something like, "Mizzou match leaves team ready for season"

Reworking headlines with certain key words can make a big difference to the reader and the writer because the writer's story may have a chance of being read from start to finish.