From, of course, The New Yorker, the greatest magazine ever, and which hasn't changed its layout design, font or look since never. Because when you're perfect to begin with, you don't need to change.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Superman's Alter Ego
From, of course, The New Yorker, the greatest magazine ever, and which hasn't changed its layout design, font or look since never. Because when you're perfect to begin with, you don't need to change.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Writing Less is More
I used to write essays/editorials. For a long spell, I sold dozens of these to three or four regular newspaper clients. I had a 1,000-word limit. This was good training. My average first draft was around 1,500 words, and telling the same story in two-thirds of the words is a great discipline. People don't want to read all your digressions. They want you to stay on topic.
As my clients went out of business, or new editors came in with different tastes, I started self-publishing myself on my various blogs. This is bad because there's no money at all in it, and fewer readers. But it's also good because there's no rejection. Everything you write gets published. But there's also no discipline. You don't have that 1,000-word limit. Out of habit I still tend to edit down, but I am seeing many, many bloggers who have never experienced writing for print publication -- or even writing under a copy editor -- who have no discipline or polish at all. A few of them even have avid followings. I just wish they were better self-editors. I had to give up reading most of the posts on rvablogs.com because it's like a Wild, Wild West of undisciplined, unedited verbal diarrhea for the most part.
So there I was, rattling along on my various blogs, writing in a silent vacuum for mostly myself when I discovered Twitter. Twitter doesn't just limit your words. It limits your characters to 140. Big words can drastically reduce how much you can say. This was a challenge, to write that small, that concisely, that to the point.
It's also a lot less work when you get the hang of it, meaning I neglect most of my blogs now for the quick, dirty, in-and-out of Twitter. I neglect reading blogs because a Twitter stream is so much more efficient. I can tell immediately, in seconds, whether you have anything worthwhile to say or not. Writing less is the future.
It's hard to pick up a newspaper after you've been in the Twitter stream, or even watch the evening news, because both news reporting disciplines still depend on time-honored but archaic ways of padding out a story. For instance, getting a man-on-the-street comment or observation, which is just ridiculous. Who is this random person? Why do I care what they think? They're actually just a stand-in for the reporter who, because of that objectivity thing, cannot react emotionally to whatever he/she is reporting.
Or the horrible, terrible how-do-you-feel question. Something terrible has happened to you or to someone you know, or someone you've heard about. How do you feel?
I feel bad. I feel sad.
No one ever says, I feel nothing. Or I don't care. Or I am precariously enjoying the suffering of this other person. No one!
We need to get past this style of reporting because people want the news fast, short, and unadorned with the unnecessary or obvious observation. Get to the point. Write like you were tweeting.
As my clients went out of business, or new editors came in with different tastes, I started self-publishing myself on my various blogs. This is bad because there's no money at all in it, and fewer readers. But it's also good because there's no rejection. Everything you write gets published. But there's also no discipline. You don't have that 1,000-word limit. Out of habit I still tend to edit down, but I am seeing many, many bloggers who have never experienced writing for print publication -- or even writing under a copy editor -- who have no discipline or polish at all. A few of them even have avid followings. I just wish they were better self-editors. I had to give up reading most of the posts on rvablogs.com because it's like a Wild, Wild West of undisciplined, unedited verbal diarrhea for the most part.
So there I was, rattling along on my various blogs, writing in a silent vacuum for mostly myself when I discovered Twitter. Twitter doesn't just limit your words. It limits your characters to 140. Big words can drastically reduce how much you can say. This was a challenge, to write that small, that concisely, that to the point.
It's also a lot less work when you get the hang of it, meaning I neglect most of my blogs now for the quick, dirty, in-and-out of Twitter. I neglect reading blogs because a Twitter stream is so much more efficient. I can tell immediately, in seconds, whether you have anything worthwhile to say or not. Writing less is the future.
It's hard to pick up a newspaper after you've been in the Twitter stream, or even watch the evening news, because both news reporting disciplines still depend on time-honored but archaic ways of padding out a story. For instance, getting a man-on-the-street comment or observation, which is just ridiculous. Who is this random person? Why do I care what they think? They're actually just a stand-in for the reporter who, because of that objectivity thing, cannot react emotionally to whatever he/she is reporting.
Or the horrible, terrible how-do-you-feel question. Something terrible has happened to you or to someone you know, or someone you've heard about. How do you feel?
I feel bad. I feel sad.
No one ever says, I feel nothing. Or I don't care. Or I am precariously enjoying the suffering of this other person. No one!
We need to get past this style of reporting because people want the news fast, short, and unadorned with the unnecessary or obvious observation. Get to the point. Write like you were tweeting.
Friday, October 2, 2009
My Lunch Tabloid
Polish newspaper designer Jacek Utko says the future of newspapers is
FREE
TABLOID
LOCAL
NICHE
OPINION
and people want to read it over breakfast. Well, maybe in Europe. I think we are too busy getting out the door to sit down with a paper in the morning unless we grab one on the way to the office and read it there. So I am going to change his BREAKFAST to
LUNCH
Yes, T-D, I would subscribe if I got a daily tabloid from you that was mostly local news with a smattering of the sexiest, grisliest if-it-bleeds-it-leads national and entertainment stories, the latest tech news, and a lot of columnists opining about more than just op-ed politics, and some comics and puzzles. (Did I just describe the New York Daily News?)
FREE
TABLOID
LOCAL
NICHE
OPINION
and people want to read it over breakfast. Well, maybe in Europe. I think we are too busy getting out the door to sit down with a paper in the morning unless we grab one on the way to the office and read it there. So I am going to change his BREAKFAST to
LUNCH
Yes, T-D, I would subscribe if I got a daily tabloid from you that was mostly local news with a smattering of the sexiest, grisliest if-it-bleeds-it-leads national and entertainment stories, the latest tech news, and a lot of columnists opining about more than just op-ed politics, and some comics and puzzles. (Did I just describe the New York Daily News?)
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Brick, the Orphan Child
If George Bush doesn't care about black people, and Kanye West doesn't care about little girl country singers, then Media General doesn't care about its bastard child tab, Brick. Which I notice is no longer Reloaded. It's just Brick, as in sinking like a...
The inside front cover is a house ad. The back cover is a house ad. The inside back cover is a puzzle page. Underneath the staff box and (one) letter is a house ad. All prime advertising spots are going vacant. The staff box lists an executive manager, but no one claiming to be anything even remotely close to an editor. The editing shows it. Chris Bopst's column is fraught with awkward phrasing and repeated words in the same sentence. (It's called a thesaurus.)
In a comical mis-edit of the Wear It page this week, each of the four people pictured are asked how they are similar to their dog. Their dogs all have different names, but since the first text box asked "How is Henry (the dog) similar to you?," every text box after that asks all the other people not how they are similar to their own dog, but "How is Henry similar to you?"
Most telling, this week the Times-Dispatch changed the size of their paper for a sleeker, narrower look. But this means the tabloids are also printing on these narrower sheets, giving them an almost perfectly square (11x11.5) look. (Style, in comparison, is 11x12). No one thought how that would impact the classifieds, which are either bunched at the bottom of the page or cut off at the top, or that the cover template would need to be redesigned.
Media General needs to take care of all the products it prints and not put something out on the streets that is embarassingly designed, poorly written and edited, appears to have not an iota of preplanning involved, and broadcasts the lack of advertising so blatantly. (You can't even find some non-profits to give free ads to rather than bulk up with house ads in all the key spots?)
Not to mention, the Brick website has been all but abandoned.
Don't you care about your image, MG? Even a little bit?
The inside front cover is a house ad. The back cover is a house ad. The inside back cover is a puzzle page. Underneath the staff box and (one) letter is a house ad. All prime advertising spots are going vacant. The staff box lists an executive manager, but no one claiming to be anything even remotely close to an editor. The editing shows it. Chris Bopst's column is fraught with awkward phrasing and repeated words in the same sentence. (It's called a thesaurus.)
In a comical mis-edit of the Wear It page this week, each of the four people pictured are asked how they are similar to their dog. Their dogs all have different names, but since the first text box asked "How is Henry (the dog) similar to you?," every text box after that asks all the other people not how they are similar to their own dog, but "How is Henry similar to you?"
Most telling, this week the Times-Dispatch changed the size of their paper for a sleeker, narrower look. But this means the tabloids are also printing on these narrower sheets, giving them an almost perfectly square (11x11.5) look. (Style, in comparison, is 11x12). No one thought how that would impact the classifieds, which are either bunched at the bottom of the page or cut off at the top, or that the cover template would need to be redesigned.
Media General needs to take care of all the products it prints and not put something out on the streets that is embarassingly designed, poorly written and edited, appears to have not an iota of preplanning involved, and broadcasts the lack of advertising so blatantly. (You can't even find some non-profits to give free ads to rather than bulk up with house ads in all the key spots?)
Not to mention, the Brick website has been all but abandoned.
Don't you care about your image, MG? Even a little bit?
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
A Step in a Direction
I like the new, thinner Times-Dispatch. The content still needs work (Local? Local.) Eventually we will get to my master plan that it should be a twice weekly all-local tabloid, with weekly tabs covering lifestyle, sports, business, as separate publications.
The bigger obituary photos are kind of disconcerting, but I really really like it when someone very old is represented by a photo of themselves when they were very young. I enjoy seeing those 1920's hairstyles and big red lips on the ladies.
I was looking at the Benny-fit coverage on Facebook. For those who don't follow music, it was a reunion show of popular local bands from the '70s and '80s. I thought for a moment, well, if I was still doing my local music newspaper, I would have written this show up and photographed it....but...but...it's 2009. Facebook has almost 450 photos posted on the fan page set up for the show. How could any publication top that kind of coverage? There's comments under many of the photos from people who were there or not here. I'm sure somewhere on the Internet there are blogs or Facebook entries about what happened.
Who needs a newspaper anymore? We're all publishing our own news.
The bigger obituary photos are kind of disconcerting, but I really really like it when someone very old is represented by a photo of themselves when they were very young. I enjoy seeing those 1920's hairstyles and big red lips on the ladies.
I was looking at the Benny-fit coverage on Facebook. For those who don't follow music, it was a reunion show of popular local bands from the '70s and '80s. I thought for a moment, well, if I was still doing my local music newspaper, I would have written this show up and photographed it....but...but...it's 2009. Facebook has almost 450 photos posted on the fan page set up for the show. How could any publication top that kind of coverage? There's comments under many of the photos from people who were there or not here. I'm sure somewhere on the Internet there are blogs or Facebook entries about what happened.
Who needs a newspaper anymore? We're all publishing our own news.
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