2nd look at Sentinel

Orlando newspaper has spiffy new look,
but are owners, editors spinning wheels?

It's Day 2 of the redesigned Orlando Sentinel, and to paraphrase Pete Townshend in "Won't Get Fooled Again"
-- meet the new paper . . . same as the old paper.

Newspaper owners, and some editors, like to change the look of the product when it doesn't sell well. That strategy rarely, if ever, adds readers or revenues. It might work for car manufacturers or soda bottlers -- have you seen Sierra Mist Undercover Orange? "It's orange, but it's clear!" -- but not newspapers.

I'll agree that snazzy designs, lots of color, big photographs, and words like "buzz" and "blog" splashed all over the place can be eye catching, but to whom? The customer who might plunk down 75 cents at 7-Eleven every once in a while, as I did this morning? (I don't subscribe to the Sentinel during the week; I get The Wall Street Journal and USA Today instead.)

Does the subscriber who walks out to the driveway every morning really care about design? When was the last time a reader asked over the breakfast table, "Hey Agnes, did you see the great infographic on Page C3?"

I often tease my visually inclined colleagues that I've never read a Letter to the Editor dealing with page layout -- except immediately following a redesign, when the obligatory "I love it" and "I hate it" letters get published.

What sells newspapers is still NEWS. News like the local team is winning big. News like the local plant might shut down. News, and good writing. Entertaining writing. Provocative writing. Sadly, the Sentinel is lacking in all those areas. What passes for news here most days is a shockingly high rate of pedestrians getting run over, the real-estate crisis (OK already, we get it!), and the fact that it might rain (even though it rains every single, bloody awful day!).

In order for news and writing to have an impact, customers have to do two things -- they have to CARE about something, and they have to READ.

These days, fewer people care about things -- anything -- and even fewer like to read about the little that they care about. I see it every day in the classroom -- abject apathy staring back at me. Mention Zimbabwe or Guantanamo, or even the Kentucky Derby, and you might as well be talking in tongues. They just don't care. And, worse, they don't care that I care that they don't care.

When 20 million to 30 million people plan their lives around "American Idol" every week, it's clear that the news business is in real trouble.

Here's what newspaper owners and editors should do:

1) Stop spending money on redesigns, and direct that cash instead into their journalists' pockets. When I asked a good friend, a national TV reporter based in Orlando, if he had seen the Sentinel's redesign, he said, "No . . . is the journalism any better?" When a boss once asked me how we could improve our copy editing, I said, "Hire better writers."

2) Spend less time thinking about ways to bring back "readers" who supposedly have left the print world for the Web. They haven't left -- they died. Spend that time going to preschools and kindergartens and elementary schools, and read to the kids. Nobody else is doing it. You need to cultivate new customers, not try to lure back customers that you never really had.

Tomorrow -- I'm going to try to get up real early and count the papers delivered to my neighborhood. There are 81 homes . . . any guesses how many get a newspaper delivered?

Comments

[Kelly]

Amen and amen. And I'm a designer.

I don't know the demographic of your neighborhood, but I'll guess 36 papers.

[Ken Carpenter]

Off the cuff demographic:

Gated community; same ZIP code as Tiger Woods; houses all have three-car garages; next door house sold recently for $579,000, down from $625,000 listing; bigger house down the street listed for around $900,000, no takers for several months; culturally diverse; lots of kids running around.

If there are 36 homes with a paper in the driveway tomorrow, I'll be stunned!

I was going to guess 15-20, maybe 25 percent.

[Wenalway]

But the designers REALLY want it to work!

The real goal of most redesigns is for designers to handle less content. They don't understand the stories, and they hate them and fear them. This way, they like their jobs better.

Doesn't matter if the readers like the paper.

[Debbie]

Isn't this just like putting lipstick on a pig?

I'll be stunned if you get up 'real early' to count papers in the driveway. What will the neighbors think?

[John]

Here's the thing -- they aren't spending big money on redesigns. I believe, based on what I read on Mr. Apple's blog, Orlando's was done in-house. I do agree that content drives design (I'm a designer, too), and a really good story makes my job SO much easier not to mention more fun.

[tom]

Redesigns are changes enabled by access to cool new publishing technology.

There is no technology that fixes the problem of readers not being interested in newspapers anymore, and journalists not knowing how to get them interested again.

So we get lots of snazzy wrappers on the same old fish.

[Bobby]

I like the News and American Idol.

[Billy]

Ah like da Dukes uh Hazzard and dat Road House movie.