Friday, March 27, 2009
Detroit: A 'jumpless' Freep poised for historic shift
Readers who manage to find a print version of the Detroit Free Press on Monday will discover a significantly redesigned paper, as it joins rival Detroit News in dropping to just three traditional print-and-deliver issues weekly. The reduced news hole has led to a "no-jumps" rule for the Freep -- not only on non-delivery days, but throughout the week, Poynter Online says in a new story. "The Free Press has viewed itself as a writers' newspaper," Publisher Dave Hunke told Poynter, "but if you sit in front of any group of readers you're going to hear them say you've simply got to get me to the point as fast as you can."
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Bull. No jump policies are silly. For one thing, readers should know the point of the story when they read the headline, if it's well written! And if a story is good enough to be on the front page it ought to jump if it's telling the readers something they need/want to know.
ReplyDeleteI've had editors pull the same ole crap and say, studies say readers don't like jumps. Well, I'm a reader and they don't bother me. I always thought they were making that up.
I'm a reader and I hate jumps. But I don't think I'm normal. I'd just as soon see one good story to a page. I don't need to see it all up front. But I've learned to tolerate jumps in the print edition. What I absolutely positively cannot, will not, accept are jumps on line. That's just pathetic pandering for page hits.
ReplyDeleteI agree, 11:24. And I've noticed the Freep jumps practically all its online stuff now, even if it's so short it doesn't need to be jumped. Pandering, for sure.
ReplyDeleteA no-jump rule was dumb 20 years ago, but this is a new era with respect to the speed and variety of news sources available at any given time.
ReplyDeletePeople want their news quickly and concisely. If you can't sum it up for me with 300-400 words on the cover you've got no chance of dragging me inside to read the rest of your opus.
If the story is too complicated to tell in 300-400 words, then get the key elements onto the cover and cram all the sidebars, explainers and graphics your heart desires inside the section.
The no jump rule rocks. Look, it isn't as if you have a great story you have to limit it to 5 inches on the front. What you do is give a summary of the story on the front (in an interesting format like alternate story-telling etc) and then you give the whole thing inside. The old model is dead, not newspapers themselves.
ReplyDeleteYou jump stories on line for additional page views. So essentially the Freep front page becomes a colorful refer index with teasers. Boy, that will bring readers in droves.
ReplyDeleteI have the sinking feeling that managers in Detroit don't have much of a clue about how this new model is going to work. On the one hand I applaud the bravery of trying something different. On the other, it's really not any different at all.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I mean. If you've decided your most important vehicle is the web -- cutting loose some of your most loyal readers in the process, by the way -- then why let the new web product's format be dictated by the dead-trees model you've just discarded? When I'm reading the new online product -- as opposed to the atrociously random web site as it's now constituted -- am I really going to want to read a 5-inch 1A "billboard" designed to the constraints of the rump product that will be sold starting next week on the city's newsstands? That billboard is old school Gannett-think, and it's supposed to tease me, the now-discarded dead-tree reader, to the story inside. Never mind that "inside" is a concept that doesn't even exist on the web. Still, once I get "inside" I'll apparently be able to read a slightly repetitive, possibly less well-crafted, longer story -- by longer, I'm thinking a whopping 10 or 12 more inches -- inside. Whooeee!
So if I'm a writer, the best-case scenario is what, 15 or 17 inches total? And if I'm a reader, I'm supposed to find that captivating?
Not that long ago the Free Press was a storyteller's paper. That philosophy has been dying since even before the G-men took over, sadly, but I'm afraid in the new format it's going to be hard to tell any kind of story at all, except in the slimmest Joe Friday just-the-facts-ma'am manner.
Detroiters are going to lose something important here once these changes are fully realized.
Gannett Blog readers should know that The Detroit News is not going to hew to this counterproductive no-jumps policy. The News' papers on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday also will be two sections, instead of one like the Free Press.
ReplyDelete