Alan Jacobson critiques Tribune paper redesigns, Poynter site makeover
Say what you want about Alan Jacobson: He’s angry, he’s a self-promoter. He needs more fiber in his diet.
I say he’s one of the smartest guys I know. And if you take the time to listen to him, you can learn an awful lot. One bad thing about leaving Hampton Roads: I’m going to miss our occasional lunches.
Alan writes, regarding my post about the redesign of the Sun-Sentinel:
I know you’re big on setting the record straight, and now you have an opportunity. On August 15 you wrote:
In general, the reaction to Fort Lauderdale’s new design — which we showed you earlier this week — has been positive.
Charles, I think you should have qualified this to say the reaction from designers has been positive, because according to Tim Frank, the response from readers has been statistically insignificant - just 0.01 percent of readers responded, positive or negative. The only published comments from readers - 17 - have been vehemently negative.
I know that keeping me honest can be a full-time job. I’m merely returning the favor :)
Yes. I could have said: Reaction by people who saw my previous blog post previewing the redesign has been positive. But since my blog was the only place where you could see the redesign and since my readers are almost exclusively newspaper designers and artists — well, I thought that was fairly obvious.
Maybe not, though. So point taken.
Alan’s on two soapboxes this week.
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ALAN’S TAKE ON THE TRIBUNE REDESIGNS
First, he’s pointing out the flaws in the Orlando Sentinel and Ft. Lauderdale SunSentinel redesigns. On his web site — home of his consultancy business, Brass Tacks Design — Alan writes:
The Sentinel’s smart, sexy, sophisticated redesign started off with a bang in June. But strip off the stylized section flags from August’s editions and you’ll see that the new Sentinel looks and reads much like the old Sentinel, in part because its labor-intensive redesign was too difficult to support with a staff that was cut weeks after the design was launched (an unfortunate event its designers could not have anticipated.)
Debut front pages by Orlando (left) and Ft. Lauderdale (right).
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This week, Tribune debuted another redesign: a reinvented SunSentinel in Ft. Lauderdale. It produced just a fraction of the comments of Orlando’s redesign.
Readers didn’t love it. Readers didn’t hate it. They just didn’t care.
…The pages are filled with images and promos. Conspicuous by its absence is text – and here’s why that’s a problem:
The people we’re trying to reach are called readers for a reason: because they read. But there is precious little to read on these pages. With pages getting narrower, and fewer of them to print upon, newspapers cannot afford to squander space on oversized clip art as seen in the prototypes.
The Sentinel’s marketing message was “fast and focused.” But “looks great, less filling” might have been more accurate.
Alan points out two New York Times-owned papers in that same Florida market are redesigning: Ocala and Gainesville:
Tribune’s designs are dazzling. NYT’s are not – its redesigns are traditional yet clean. By reducing the number of design elements, NYT plans to streamline page production so editors have more time for editing.
We’ll be eager to see what Alan comes up with for those two projects.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t post Alan’s comments without allowing folks in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale to respond. Orlando Sentinel AME Bonita Burton, on vacation this week, writes:
Most industry insiders are familiar with Alan’s tactic of belittling others’ innovations as a way to drum up business for himself.
I’m extremely pleased with the way our redesign is wearing - and the paper is selling - two months into our launch. As I’ve explained to Alan, the paper does look and feel a lot like it used to because our focus on the content kicked into high gear months before June’s aesthetic update. A more accurate comparison would be to look at the paper a few years ago compared to today, something Alan has declined to do.
Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, of course. I’m just more interested in what our readers have to say, and making adjustments accordingly. I will say that the presumption he makes about my staff’s capabilities is a new level of ignorance and arrogance, even for Alan.
The official response from Sun Sentinel DME/Visuals Tim Frank and Design Director Paul Wallen:
Whatever, Alan.
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ALAN’S TAKE ON POYNTER’S WEB SITE REDESIGN
Meanwhile, over in the online world, the Poynter Institute has announced a redesign of its home page. That new-and-improved site kicks off Saturday (I’ve cropped it to show only the top portion):
Alan, however, looked at the prototype and thought the most important content was difficult to find. So he took a swing at redesigning it himself:
Tag the thumbnails for a larger view of each:
I gotta say, Alan’s looks a lot faster and cleaner. But maybe that’s just me. I prefer stripped-down visuals and fewer graphics in my web sites for quicker loading. That’s one of my pet peeves in the world of web design: Slow-loading pages, which seems increasingly a problem.
But then again, I’m probably not the target audience.
Poynter’s news design debuts Saturday. Read Poynter Online director Bill Mitchell’s extensive briefing on the new design here.
You can find Alan’s analysis here. Alan even took the additional step of acquiring comments from Bill and from Poynter’s managing editor for innovation, Jeremy Gilbert, about his proposal.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Jacobson touched on something that I wish more newspaper people would be wary of: the “our readers” argument. I hear it all the time, and I’m tired of it. Everyone with a big idea in newspapers uses it. It’s a logical fallacy, even a classical one with a Latin name, argumentum ad populum. We should have the same reaction to arguments citing support of “readers” as we should have to arguments that President Bush makes on behalf of “the American people:” bullshit; prove it.
Alan writes:
“The people we’re trying to reach are called readers for a reason: because they read. But there is precious little to read on these pages. With pages getting narrower, and fewer of them to print upon, newspapers cannot afford to squander space on oversized clip art as seen in the prototypes.”
Don’t “readers” read to get news; can’t they get news without reading; how does this theoretical group of “readers” fit such a narrow profile, one that only wants information from words? Who are these “readers?” In reporters’ minds, there’s a vast swath of readers that tunes into every transition, and in copy editors’ minds, every clever headline, and in designers’ minds, every masterpiece in kerning; individually, every one is partly right, but mostly wrong, and together, about half and half. If it were so easy to pin down who are readers are and what pleases them, newspapers would not be flailing as much as they are.
But newspapers should not only be serving the readers; they should serve the community. Spending 50 cents at a newspaper dispenser (or 75 in some cities) isn’t like buying a country club membership; it’s almost a donation.
No amount of gimmicky design can replace community service, or replace a community of journalists to fulfill that goal.
Is the SunSentinel successful? I don’t know. I don’t live in South Florida. I haven’t picked one up. It doesn’t have any bearing on my life. But it looks nice.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:44 pm
When Charles first posted previews of the S-S redesign, I happened to be in the midst of a two-week vacation in the Fort Lauderdale area. For the first several days, I bought the paper every morning, then just stopped and looked for the Miami Herald instead (unfortunately, all of their boxes north of FTL seem to be ignored). There was nothing wrong with the old S-S design. There’s nothing wrong with the new design either, except for its ability to convince VizEds readers that this is a huge, positive step for our business. I stopped buying the paper because of the content … the lack of news, to be more precise. The redesign — bold, inventive, you name it — seems to keep that tradition.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:57 am
It’s always nice to see that when journalists are losing their jobs by the thousands this year, there are still self-important assholes who can make money by coning desperate editors and publishers. God bless them.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:01 am
David Brauhn’s comment, “But newspapers should not only be serving the readers; they should serve the community,” should be tattooed on every newspaper journalist’s forearm. Designer or not.
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 am
Bravo — community service is the one mission almost every single one of our newsrooms has forgotten in the last five years.