Take five minutes to watch this presentation. Thanks to () for passing it along.
First let me say that that newspaper is gorgeous. Decorate-your-wall gorgeous. And if you transfer those infographics to the web, they'd kill on . And yes, I'd probably buy it with some sort of consistency, because I like pretty things.
I wrote about 2,000 words about why I think this wouldn't work in the U.S., focusing on the fact that people who read newspapers like to read stories and people who write newspaper stories like having a place to show off their writing and more and more, the stories in this paper are being told with photos and graphics.
But I realized as I was writing, it's fairly obvious that readers don't enjoy reading quite as much as writers enjoy writing. So the fact that there might be no more than 200 words on a front page or 500 words in any interior spread isn't a problem for me.
I do, however, think it has a magazine-like quality that makes it less attractive as a daily news source and more appealing as something to look at slowly throughout the day or week. It makes me want to admire the artwork, not find out what's going on at school board meetings – I think I'd be distracted from the news.
But then, maybe that's just me. I like news, and I like the written word. Perhaps people would get more out of bigger graphics and shorter stories, though – USA Today has done very well on that model, and it's not a paper I pick up at all, which means I likely wouldn't be the target audience for something like this.
What do you think?
January 20th, 2010 at 23:12
Cutting-edge design has been tried in the U.S. — including the Herald Journal (I’m sure long before your time in Syracuse). That team took its inspiration from the incredible Tim Harrower, who I had the good fortune of learning from for a time. People around here just didn’t know what to make of it, and now the Herald is a memory.
Anyway, these designs, for whatever reason, seem to really lack the seriousness and authority a newspaper deserves. And they don’t give me what I really want. I can get quick-hit news from the TV, radio, Internet…cripe, now I get it from Twitter. But the newspaper is that one place I should be able to go to get the whole story. Unabridged.
I’m a firm believer that the story trimming, flashier design, friendlier pages, info graphics, quote boxes, head boxes etc. that newspapers have been leaning on for nigh on 20 years to save them have really dumbed down the product — even if it is prettier. On the other side, some of the most ravenously read newspapers are hideous.
At one point in my career I was helping not only to launch new products but purchase existing papers as well. I made some phone calls around a community once to get sentiment about the local paper, and asked people how they would feel about us owning their paper. It was hugely popular, but not profitable, and would go out of business if we didn’t buy it. I explained that. I explained how we could design it better, make it prettier and easier to read. The answer, invariably, was “leave our paper alone.”
People want to trust their newspaper. They want to feel it serves their interests. They want to look up to it for its authority — not because it’s hanging on a wall.