“Events” Items

Poynter NewsU Technology Scope, Version One

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.

Changing The Chronicle’s Visual Image. Or Not.

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.

Mario Garcia on The Arizona Republic Redesign

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.

 

Arizona Republic Announces Redesign (and My Hiring)

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.

Early Online Experience: JForum on CompuServe

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.

Perhaps My First Poynter Faculty Appearance

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.

When You Are the ONLY Graphics Editor

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.

How the Arizona Republic Installed its 2nd Gen Pagination System

One of the most read newspaper industry technologist is David Cole, who published “The Cole Papers.”  In 1997 he sent one of his reporters, John Bryan, to write about how Phoenix Newspapers replaced its first generation of pagination with a new system from CCI Europe.  One of the reasons we selected CCI in 1995 was its ability to hold items in a publishing database. Here’s one of my quotes from the article.

Chief among the Republic strategist is Howard Finberg, longtime industry pundit, designer and evangelist who professes to be interested in pagination only as a means to an end.

“We don’t want to paginate anymore,” the paper’s director of information technology said. “I believe in publication systems that slice information into smaller and smaller pieces,” which can be used by an infinite number of information “products,” such as a web site, CD-ROM or whatever comes down the pike.

The article described how we made the transition [not quite complete when the reporter visited] and our vision for the future of newspaper publishing.

The State of Newspaper Design

Design magazine, the publication of The Society of Newspaper Designers [SND] asked a number of editors to write about various aspects of the state of newspaper design.  I used my article talk about three key things:

  • Training [aka development]
  • Technology
  • Organizational structure

I like what I wrote about technology.

Technology: I’m not sure computers have been a blessing for journalists. I’m not interested in what kinds of tricks we can do with them but the facility with which we can do our jobs.

This edition‘s cover listed so many friends and industry colleagues.