Stay out of ruts. Small circulation never justifies stale makeup. Satisfy the oncoming "omnivorous and opportunistic" generation. Experts from around the world offered this advice at the
Society forNews Design’s annual workshop in Boston on October 11-13.
Political campaigns have "repetitive content and dense material," noted Virginian-Pilot design team leader
Paul Nelson. So, "Don't fall into the trap of handling the news the same way each day; we have to seize opportunities wherever we can to make it easier for readers to get information out of our coverage."
On Election Day 2004, for example, the paper led with a graphic profile of 10 key states. Nelson's thinking: "If you don't have time to read the paper, here's something you can use." Instead of standard treatment of what he called "scripted" presidential debates, as a way to make local connections to national issues, the paper once led with a "what did you think?" next-day story.
The key to covering ongoing events like the Iraq conflict is "tempo shift," said Michael Jarlner, foreign news editor of the Danish daily
Politiken. He said "sensational" front pages work only occasionally, as when Saddam Hussein was hung, and that over-use weakens their effect.
To break out of the official-statement mold, his paper features Iraqi citizens' diaries and Danish soldiers' personal views in both breaking and day-to-day coverage.
Whatever a paper's size, contended two designers, their goal should be the same: serving readers. They said smaller papers should take chances and play local stories big.
Staffers at dailies like
Matt Erickson's Times of Northwest Indiana (89,942 circulation Sunday; 82,709 daily) in Munster, Ind., may even find innovation easier. With a "take calculated chances" philosophy,
he produced football previews for each of 30 high schools in his circulation area — delivering one batch of papers himself. "Nobody said it could be done," he said. But, "Stick to your guns. I'm trying
to reach kids who don't read the paper."
Orlando Sentinel senior designer Nick Masuda dislikes "design for the sake of design. Our job is to present the story in a better way." When he was at the
Sun Journal (34,883 circulation Sunday; 34,107 daily) in Lewiston, Maine, he huddled with reporters and editors, sometimes writing all the headlines in a major package.
"Know your community," he stressed. Despite some colleagues' misgivings, he ran an aerial shot of a murder scene, including the dead body. The photo covered about five columns in print. "I knew our readers — they're mill workers — could handle this," Masuda said. "It's very important to take risks when it's big news."
"Meet early and often with all staffers to plan major projects," said
Kelli Sullivan,
Los Angeles Times deputy design director for news projects. "The best work is done through collaboration and teamwork," Sullivan said, the lead designer on the paper's 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning series "Altered Oceans."
Her advice: Determine space and color needs early to get the best project, perhaps holding it until you have the proper amount of space. Edit tightly to play key elements well, and work through multiple versions to improve design. Be ruthless when editing photos and graphics, and remove clutter. "Our motto is, 'Keep things simple.' "
She'll break design rules for special projects, such as a front-page magazine approach to "toxin tide," and use "quiet" graphics and headlines on an account of war veterans' traumatic injuries.
Mark Porter, whose reinvented Britain's
Guardian has been called a benchmark of contemporary newspaper design, favors a similar approach, stressing the need for "volume control" with a headline
hierarchy.
He recommends "reader entry points" such as small areas of very bright colors, two-deck summaries of lead stories and over-sized teasers with pictures above the flag. Breaker quotes with small pictures are good ways to get "bad pictures into the papers."
Porter, like many workshop speakers, plays great shots big, using a center spread photo most days even though 3,000 words could fit into that space.
Noting the challenge of different delivery systems, Porter said, "Learning is the most important thing we do. The future will be an incredible learning experience."
New York Times futurist-in-residence
Michael Rogers agreed, seeing a challenge in what he calls the oncoming Millennium Generation of "omnivorous, opportunistic" consumers.
"Without set news habits of their elders," he said, "they'll consume media in its most convenient form." But that doesn't necessarily rule out print; he noted that more students read college papers in print than online.
Predicting an "explosion of low-cost, high-speed wireless devices" — which he called the emerging platform for news and information delivery -- he said, "We need to be everywhere because our audience will be everywhere."
