Style beats substance every time
Gee where do I start on the Strib’s redesign/repositioning?
First, I guess anyone who’s been paying attention has heard the Strib was undergoing a redesign. It debuted today, and I must say I find the use of the pastel colors in the flag the most striking use of pastels since Crockett and Tubbs cleaned up Miami in 1984. I know that’s what the kids want in their newspaper, the signature colors from 21 years ago.
Ok, let’s forget that and go on to the “substance” of the makeover. I was completely bowled over by “one-minute strib”, not only because I think the Strib is now officially calling itself what everyone else has been calling it for years, but also because I am so impressed that they noticed that the Wall Street Journal has been doing a digest of their paper on the front page ever since any of us could read, and the Strib finally ripped off the idea. Of course, the Strib improved on it by moving the digest off page one onto page three, where they spent almost half of the column telling you what was on page one. Yeah, that page one–the one you had to turn over to get to page three.
Wait, I forgot I was talking about “substance”. Where might one expect to find such substance–and even news that might differentiate a newspaper from, say, a TV station? The front page, perhaps? No such luck. Today, we get the same stuff we got last night from Cyndy (If It Bleeds, It Leads) Brucato over at Channel 5. Did you hear about the kids who killed their parents? And how about them crazy Vikings? Yup, just what I care about, two stories that have nothing to do with me and about people I couldn’t care less about–Vikings players and the kids who have them as role models.
I was especially happy to see, though, right there at the top of the front page, where some newspapers put news, that I could turn to page five of the sports section to see how I could run into my local gas or grocery and pick up my Viking medallion of the day. Personally, I think it would be more fun to have the kids fill a scrap book of Strib-sponsored Vikings mug shots. Now that would sell papers.
On to the Opinion Exchange, which is what they’re now calling Op-Ex. Aside from the seeming obligatory column from yesterday’s NY Times which I’ve already read, we now have a feature called The Street. In this feature the Strib allows us to exchange opinions with idiots we wouldn’t give the time of day if they were living in our own basement. Today we have a guy from Orono who thinks we can solve the energy crisis in our country by pumping more oil out of Texas. Well here’s my exchange for him: “You’re a moron.”
Another bit of substance that I really like is the short summaries of the articles that appear above any article longer than a couple hundred words. My favorite was the summary of editorial page editor susan albright’s fervent introductory column: “Opinion Exchange expresses our desire that this page and the Sunday opinion section connect readers with a wide range of perspectives on issues of the day.”
Ok, first, what happened to capitalizing Op-Ex bylines? Who’s writing these pieces, e.e. cummings?
Second, if the readers really need a summary of Op-Ex pieces, why not just go all the way? Here’s an idea: “In today’s column, Molly Ivins says President Bush is an asshole.” We don’t really need much more information than that, do we?
Finally, (I could go on, but according to Strib research, you don’t like to read too many words,) do you remember when newspapers used to have Obituaries? Not any more. We now have “remembering”. I was surprised to see, however, that the individual death notices didn’t have their top line summaries. Wouldn’t they be fun to write? “Dorothy Smith got old and died.”
Or, in a few years we could read this one about the Strib itself: “This poor excuse for a newspaper died from repeatedly shooting itself in the foot by underestimating its readers.”
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