Responsible for the death of newspapers: Design directors?
Poynter today published a piece by John Walter, a former executive editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and who was a member of the team that founding USA Today.
He died last September, Poynter reports, but his wife found an essay on his computer that named the three key people responsible for the death of newspapers.
Those three people:
- A.J. Liebling, a columnist for the New Yorker in the 1940s who touched off a craze for newspaper megers.
- Al Neuharth, under whose watch Gannett grew into a giant company, went public and began running papers for the bottom line, as opposed to public service.
- And “Arnold,” a “layout editor” of the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Whaaaat?
First of all, we think Walter is really referring to Edmund Arnold, regarded by many of us as the father of modern newspaper design. Ed died more than two years ago at age 93. Walter’s piece — perhaps it was incomplete at the time of Walter’s death — was missing a key nut graf.
And secondly: Whaaaat?
Walter explains: In the 1960s, newspapers were mostly ugly and disjointed, designed in long vertical columns.
In the middle of this individuality came Arnold, who one day decided that though newspapers had been printing stories in vertical columns for 200 years, there was no particular reason to do so, and he took out his line gauge and talked to the people in the composing room — who thought he was crazy — and laid out his newspaper full of horizontal rectangles. Stories stretched over four columns, or even five, with lots of white space thrown in.
And suddenly people were saying the Courier-Journal was one of the best-looking papers in America. “Just like a magazine!” everybody said. And, just like that, newspapers started to abandon the ugly, hodgepodge look of their vertical columns and went into the magazine business.
They lost, thereby, a sense of urgency, and the thing that made them look like, well, newspapers. And it got worse; eventually layout editors were replaced by something called design directors, and design directors took to running pictures of large vegetables, first in black and white and later in color, and newspapering went all soft and squishy as hell.
So that is why that layout editor is the second person responsible for the death of newspapers.
—
UPDATE:
Astoundingly talented Martin Gee — currently the design director of Oregon Business magazine — apparently took the same offense at this piece as I did. His response was to construct this:
March 27th, 2009 at 11:58 am
This guy is dead wrong. Revenue shortfalls caused the downfall of newspapers, not changes to the editorial product.
Deep Throat got it right: “Follow the money,” as I explained back in 1998:
http://bit.ly/3L0K9S
March 27th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
“… design directors took to running pictures of large vegetables, first in black and white and later in color, and newspapering went all soft and squishy as hell …”
HAHAHAHAHA! Awesome! Gotta admire that old-old-OLD-school mentality.
March 27th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I thought what he had to say was pretty much ridiculous and hypocritical…as witnessed by my comment on Poynter’s site.
Don’t piss and moan after the fact when you were in a position to make some changes.
March 27th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Wow. That’s rich. While I agree that we’ve gone off a design cliff (sorry, Alan — an upside-down ledge), Ed Arnold is the last person to blame. The absolute last.
Think of it this way: two of the three national papers in the U.S. embrace vertical design and look, by most designers’ opinions, gray and boring.
Plus, look what’s coming down the pipe from Europe, and you’ll see we’re coming full circle in fundamentals. Eventually, those papers in the states that are left will catch on.
While I’m not trying to ignite a debate here, I honestly feel that basic newspaper design has devolved to over-design. Take it back to basics and I wonder how many readers would notice, care, etc. We should pulling out the big guns for those great stories, series, packages — remember, content drives design. Everything else? Keep it simple.
March 27th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
“While I’m not trying to ignite a debate here, I honestly feel that basic newspaper design has devolved to over-design. Take it back to basics and I wonder how many readers would notice, care, etc”
I would agree that we over-design. I also know readers notice. Remember not too long ago readers complained to the Chicago Tribune for putting too large of photos on their cover? They said there was not enough news. Similarly, students I talked to when I was a designer said they didn’t like splashy A1 and sports because it meant there was less news. But they DO like splashy Entertainment covers.
They also liked concept driven art as long as it didn’t take up too much space. They saw over designed pages as laziness “You must not have enough news to fill the space so you have to put this huge image here.”
Now, does that kill a newspaper? I really sincerely doubt that. I think it just leaves a sour thought in someone’s mind until they throw the paper away and start fresh tomorrow. I think this because my surveys were different every week depending on the paper they had in front of them. People don’t remember - and really who blames them - one week or one day to the next what it looked like. Just that it was trustworthy and had information they wanted.
March 28th, 2009 at 1:23 am
blame designers: http://bit.ly/rAwnz
March 28th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I think the ‘death’ of news[papers] is simply because they are expensive, wasteful and bad for the environment. So it’s ‘our’ fault for not evolving with our consumers and their demands. And even with skinny webs, they kind of bulky and impractical to read.
But the University here does offer paid for NYT print papers to pick up and leave anywhere on campus. That’s pretty nice and takes care of cost, having to carry it around. I like that.
It’s just frustrating when I want to share the story with my network of friends. There’s no ‘recommend’ button in the newspaper.
I agree with John. If you could have done something about it, why are you whining? I would have liked to do something about it.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Some really smart people have said that investors are already through the transition from daily print to daily digital - based purely on the stock valuations. Hard to dispute that claim when you look at the company valuations.
Publishers resist the low-cost internet revenue market saying cute things like “It’s trading dimes for dollars.”
Yes it is and your company’s share price now reflects this reality. Your stocks that were once worth dollars are worth now pennies, at best.
So, the first step would be to admit that we are in the ‘dimes’ business.
The most profitable and valuable companies on the Internet are making money a little at time from many streams of data. Google makes billions being in the dimes business.
Change Management projects could save more U.S. newspapers - why do they resist the process?
Change Management firms can help media companies create new companies that can compete in the new ‘dimes business’ instead of trying to strap dimes to your dollars-based business.
The Swiss, in particular have a decades long track record in helping companies survive changing market conditions.