September | 2011 | Newsroom With A View

Archive for September, 2011

Another thing you’ll miss about newspapers

Posted in Print media, tagged news of the weird, page design on September 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Ever see an iPad crease? Maybe it can happen, but I bet you can’t read it after that. But a newspaper crease, sometimes that’s the hand of God at work, perhaps a mischevous God testing to see if we’re paying attention, as when a crease merges an f and a t so that “shift” appears as sometime much more interesting. See more on the above from Charles Apple.

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Where people get their news

Posted in Broadcast media, Mobile media, Online media, Print media, Social media, tagged audience, mobile, social on September 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

They buried the lead. You have to read to nearly the end of a press release from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism to get to what seems to me to be the most important element of a new study by Pew’s Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, asking about where people get their local information:

“While there are a variety of demographic dimensions that are linked to the way people get local news and information, the most striking is the difference between younger and older information consumers. Simply put, one generation into the web, older consumers still rely more heavily on traditional platforms while younger consumers rely more on the internet. Among adults under age 40, the web ranks first or ties for first for 12 of the 16 local topics asked about.”

That’s not earth-shaking, but it’s “the most striking” demographic breakdown, underlining and confirming that younger news consumers’ habit of getting information online is not changing. (Note also a recent Knight Foundation survey of high schoolers and their news habits.)

Also notable to me was the finding on mobile use:

“Nearly half of adults (47%) use mobile devices to get local news and information. Not surprisingly, mobile is particularly popular for ‘out and about’ categories of information, such as restaurants.”

Perhaps the only thing in the study results that really surprised me, though, was the high percentage of people who reported doing things that Pew calls “participating” in the news — and note here, again, how this group focuses on the Internet:

“And 41% of all adults can be considered ‘local news participators’ because they contribute their own information via social media and other sources, add to online conversations, and directly contribute articles about the community. Both these groups are substantially more likely than others to use the internet to get local news and information on almost all topics.”

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How newspapers commemorate tragedy

Posted in Print media, tagged page design on September 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

A friend and former colleague gets irritated by the way the media in general make big deals of round numbers — the 10th, the 100th, the 500th, the 1,000th whatever — and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 was no exception. He posted on Facebook, “Sept. 11: blow it out every year, or don’t blow it out at all.” I understand his point, but the media attach greater significance to big, round numbers because that’s human nature; if we didn’t do it, people would ask why because they themselves (with a few exceptions such as my friend) do it. So if you look over the Sept. 11 pages archived by the Newseum, for the most part you’ll see attempts to note the weight the date carried. Not all of them attempted to “blow it out,” but many did. At Poynter.org, Julie Moos highlights 25 front pages that she felt convey the power of deliberative design: “By using tower imagery, illustration, flags and iconic photos, they carry the power of the moment.” One that didn’t make Moos’ list but is extremely evocative is the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a very arty design of two arms either reaching into the air or grasping at it, with a person falling between them:

None of Media General’s pages from the day made the 25, but as you can see below there was quite a range — from pages that look almost like any other day to ones qualifying as keepsakes. What’s most striking may be that there are no two that look very much alike.