Thanks.

I really didn’t like this page at all. I was going to use stronger words than that, but I was afraid people might stop reading before they got to the reasoning, and that would defeat the purpose of posting this at all.

Before I get started, let me just say that no, I don’t automatically hate on pages with lots of white space, nor do I go a-ranting just every time a paper clears the deck for one story — each of which is enough to send some folks into design rage oblivion. I assure you that’s not the case here. Also, I wanted to be clear that I think the elements on this page are good — really good. And the words are great; there’s just not enough of them. 

But unless the goal was to make help me better sympathize with their readers (in which case: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED), this page failed on a lot of levels.

I felt cheated. And if I were a Clevelander, I’d feel even more cheated. I wanted more from the topic’s home paper. And the way I’ve watched Cleveland/NBA/sports fans gobble up everything they can about this story over the last few days, this abuse of white space felt like a wasted opportunity.

It took the readers for granted. 

As I understand it, the Plains-Dealer houses quite possibly the best writer on this particular topic — of course they do! The paper easily could have — should have — capitalized on that. These days, newspapers don’t often get the opportunity to have the full attention of  readers — their own and, on this day in particular, likely readers well beyond the borders their normal daily circulation map. So why wouldn’t the paper seize that opportunity? The ring statement was clever, but would have played just as well tucked under/below, with the arrow curved around appropriately, leaving plenty of room to really say something — anything — to readers who just couldn’t get enough.

What a waste.

I know it would be difficult to get ahead of the swarm of web columns, tweets, comments, blog postings, etc., that likely would have been well read by the time  But I want to see the city of Cleveland on this page. I want to hear the voice of the newspaper and have a better understanding of what happened to Cleveland on July 8, 2010. And while I love all the words on this page, I don’t think they acknowledge the fervor I saw on TV, in photo galleries and on the majority of my (and probably everyone else’s) Facebook feed last night. 

This is not a page of record. Years down the road, with a framed copy of this page hanging beautifully in someone’s office, someone will look at this page and wonder what happened here, and they will be left to infer the information for themselves because nothing on this page definitively tells them. 

Bottom line: The hometown paper didn’t own their coverage and instead made a page for designers, not readers. 

But, hey, that’s just one designer’s opinion.

Sorry this got lengthy. Thanks for playing.