In the mid- 1990s, pagination was the hot topic for editors. Most newspapers were starting on their journey to digitally produce the newspapers via computer terminals. The American Society of Newspaper Editors {ASNE] and the Society of Newspaper Design [SND] collaborated on a project to help newsrooms deal with pagination issues. I was one of a dozen experts who answered questions for a special report.
As Poynter’s Presidential Scholar, one of my tasks was to look at the viability of e-learning. This fit within my portfolio of exploring the intersection of journalism, technology and training. To help me [and Poynter] better understand the potential of online modules, I created one. A chapter from Chip Scanlan’s textbook, “Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century” became the course material.
We adapted the text into a e-learning module that ran on the eCollege platform and asked the Poynter’s summer fellows to take the module and share their reaction.
We had three questions:
1. How does one build an effective e learning course?
2. What would be the commitment by the faculty [and others] to present the course?
3. What would be the reaction of the students to an online teaching experience?
I wrote a long memo to various Poynter folks, including Jim Naughton [president] and Karen Dunlap [dean] and included the results of a survey of the 15 summer program students who took the class.
…almost all [80%] said the course material was either effective or somewhat effective. Only one student had a negative response to the material. The effectiveness of the presentation was rated lower, with 60% of the students saying the course was effective or somewhat effective.
Of course, we didn’t have time to hire a designer, so the presentation was basic.
I believe our first online course was a success.
I believe that Poynter should quickly and confidently move to develop a series of online classes.
… I also want to acknowledge the support and enthusiasm of Chip Scanlan for this project.
With this memo, Robin Sloan and I outlined the technology that would power The Poynter Institute’s ‘s e-learning platform, News University. NewsU needed to “have a database at its core.” That was true then; it is still true.
NewsU.org will be the Web portal to journalism training resources and programs. It will have a database at its core—one that will include both static web resources (resources for trainers, self-teaching tools) and date-sensitive seminars, and be able to sort both by category, organization, geographic location, date, and more.
Our second requirement involve search, ideally searching for other e-learning training journalists could take. Our goal was to build a portal of training. As NewsU grew, I realized that there was little need for a portal as there were few other e-learning resources available to journalists.
In late 1986, I wrote a memo to the paper’s publisher (Richard Thieriot) and editor (William German) urging a discussion about the design of the San Francisco Chronicle. It was a memo deeply rooted in understatement as both Thieriot and German saw little need to change the appearance of the newspaper. I urged a gradual approach, an evolutionary method of updating the typography and design of the newspaper. Part of the argument for change involved addressing the weakening economic aspects of the paper.
However, now is the time in which we must look ahead and decide on the type of newspaper we wish to present to our current readers over the next several decades. And we need to decide on what type of paper
will be necessary to attract new readers among those who live in the Bay Area but do not read The Chronicle.
While change would eventually come to the paper, the reaction to the memo was mostly silence.
I did like making this point about the importance of design:
While design cannot keep readers, but it can attract them to the paper and let the content and editing hold them. We are missing out on readers who move to the Bay Area from other parts of the country who are accustomed to a more organized, easily readable design in their daily newspaper.
To the casual reader, the images in the memo aren’t very dramatic. However, if you knew the Chronicle from that period, you would remember they were still using wavy rule boxes around photographs. Yuck. Kudos to John Sullivan for his work on the prototype pages.
The Arizona Republic’s redesign was an interesting exercise in trying to find a way to please a publisher who had the dream of making The Republic a New York Times-style newspaper. That meant he wanted a subdued approach to headlines and design and NO color. Putting it in positive terms: classic design.
When the publisher of The Arizona Republic, Pat Murphy, commissioned me to redesign his newspaper, he had brought to our discussion a clearly defined blueprint of what he wanted his newspaper to look like: “Make it elegant,” he said. “Also let it look like a classic, reliable newspaper, one that readers will feel comfortable and safe with.”
Truthfully, I hated it. Mario Garcia didn’t care for it either. He was very kind in an article he wrote for Newspaper Techniques, the monthly newsletter of IFRA. He was also said some very kind things about me.
The Arizona Republic, is totally paginated (triple-I), which facilitated the idea of a half-column concept. Into the third month of the redesign, the newspaper hired an assistant managing editor for graphics, Howard Finberg, who came from The San Francisco Chronicle, and had served as graphics editor of The Chicago Tribune, as well. With his impressive credentials and experience, he became a full partner in the process, refining the use of informational graphics, guiding the every day logistics of the redesign, and hiring new designers for the different sections.
I was the first president of the SND Foundation. I had fund-raising duties. It wasn’t a slam dunk. But I didn’t get dunked for a good cause at the society convention in Kansas City. It was chilly duty for a good cause.
The Arizona Republic’s newsroom newsletter, EN, announces the hiring of Mario Garcia to redesign The Arizona Republic. And, burying the lede [grin], my hiring.
TWO MORE STEPS have been taken in our continuing effort to improve The Republic: A contract with Dr. Mario Garcia of the Poynter Institute to redesign the paper, and the hiring of Howard Finberg of the San Francisco Chronicle as our new assistant managing editor for graphics.
Garcia’s redesign of The Republic will begin in July with research to understand how readers and editors perceive the newspaper. He will be here the week of July 6. The schedule will give him a chance to live up to his nickname, “‘the Human Hurricane”.
I just love the irony that years later I would be working at Poynter, although Mario would be gone. The world is a small place.
In the mid-1980s, I joined one of the first online services, CompuServe. [Previously, I had been a member of The Source, but that’s a different post.] One of the reasons I liked CompuServe was its journalism area, called JForum. Jim Cameron was truly an online pioneer and created a place for journalists to virtually meet and share experiences and questions.
Jim and I started chatting online and eventually I helped bring the Society of Newspaper Design into the JForum fold as special interest group. Jim also made me a “sysop” which meant I had special online privileges, most of which I have forgotten. One of the things I did to help JForum was to make slides of various screens. I used a newly purchased MacPlus to capture the screens.
It is interesting to note that Sam Donaldson, an ABC TV correspondent, was an early adopter of online services.
While I can’t be sure, I think this is the seminar where I did one of my first Poynter teaching sessions. I know I attended Poynter as a participant earlier than this date. It is all a bit cloudy. Here’s the description:
“Newspaper Design Seminar at the newly named Poynter Institute for Media Studies January 29-February 4, 1984. The emphasis of this seminar will be the layout and design of news pages’ with special emphasis placed on preparation of graphic packages and material for the 1984 Presidential elections.”
The seminar was led by Mario Garcia. A few years later, he and I would be work on the redesign of The Arizona Republic. Other faculty included: Phil Nesbitt, Michael Keegan, David Griffin, Michael E. Foley and Roy Peter Clark [who is still at Poynter].
It is interesting to note the prices:
Cost for the seven-day seminar is $400 plus hotel and meals. We have reserved a block of rooms at the St. Petersburg Beach Hilton Inn at $61 per night for single accommodations.
In 2013 dollars, the seminar would cost: $897.28; the hotel would be $136.84. The invite letter is here.
About a year after starting the Chicago Tribune’s graphics desk, I wrote a very long and detailed memo about what those duties. The memo was for the lucky [or unlucky] editor who had to fill-in for me during vacation or other absences. In some ways, it was a mini-handbook about how to create graphics and work with the artists and the news desk at the newspaper. The memo also include information about to do the promotional banners across the top of the front page; we called them “overlines”. It wasn’t the best memo I’ve ever written. In fact, it reads a bit breathless and a bit high-handed. However, it does have some good advice:
Each graphic must relate to the story it accompanies, either directly from information in the story, or indirectly with information only touched on but not expanded upon. Check first for sense; can this material be best explained in a graph, a map, a chart, a table? Or should it be an insert paragraph? The goal is to make readers understand–not make reporters have an easier writing time or supply “art devices” for makeup.
Perhaps I should have pushed harder at the idea that graphics would make it easier for reporters to do their job. It might have made the graphics revolution easier.