"Judges said the new Sunday section is a bold, ambitious effort to target Burlington’s boomer audience with the passion topics of green living and environmental coverage from a Vermonter’s point of view."
-- August 2009 issue of News Watch, announcing first place Award of Excellence to the Burlington Free Press for its then-new Sunday section, Green Mountain. This is the earliest reference I've found (so far) to a new "passion topics" initiative that the U.S. newspaper division appears to be unveiling at a conference for editors in mid-August. This may be focused on boosting Sunday circulation.
What would your site's "passion topics" likely be, assuming these are supposed to be news subjects of especially high interest to readers -- especially on Sundays.
ReplyDeleteAt The Clarion-Ledger it certainly would be either a sports column by Rick Cleveland, the Outdoors coverage by Bobby Cleveland and last, but certainly not least, Jerry Mitchell's award-winning civil rights coverage.
ReplyDeletePaper towels? How our overuse of paper towels is destroying the planet and impoverishing Third World countries by robbing them of the trees they need for fuel and food (nuts). If America's housewives used one less sheet of paper towel and instead used a reusable sponge, think of the trees saved from miserable deaths. Now that's something I can get passionate about,
ReplyDeleteGlobal warming? How we are ignoring the clear evidence the world is heating up. Look at the poor polar bears. The ice is melting and grizzlies are moving into polar bear territory. They are natural enemies, but someone recently posted something i read about how they are mating, and the product we now have is grolar bears. How's that for passion.
ReplyDelete8:26 Yes, something is going. Ligers and tigons, and, oh, my what else. That pernicious global warming is changing the plant. Spotted here: the not-so-rare lemming troll.
ReplyDeleteI'm passionate to find out why my Acai berries didn't work. Gave me zits, which made me passionately opposed to jumping on trends.
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ReplyDeleteYou men disgust me. All you think about is sex... sex...sex. You get up in the morning and you are thinking sex, you drive to work and you think sex, you come home and sit on the couch and think sex, and you go to bed at night and you think sex.
ReplyDeletePfft. The last place I think of sex is when I get home. I'm married.
ReplyDeleteBut what does this have to do with Gannett?
11:34 Everything to do with passion.
ReplyDeleteThese passion topic sections (more than just Sunday) were started by former publisher Brad Robertson.
ReplyDeleteOh, gee. Another push to save the Sunday paper. Sure, we did that early last year. Created a new section. Allocated reporters' time. It was great. Produced strong Sunday papers for 6 months, and then it ceased to be management's in-flavor. Now Sundays A1s feature HUGE graphics (to fill the page) and the new section gets filled with guest writers and syndicated columns.
ReplyDeleteMore Informative Labor and Farm Stories.
ReplyDeleteIf by "passion topics" they mean "write good stories about subjects readers actually care about" -- then I can only conclude they are truly getting low on ideas. It's the only strategy left that they haven't tried.
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