I’ve never liked green or yellow on newsprint, although I accept that discreet use of these colours can be effective on certain sports pages.
Despite my prejudice, the Dorset Echo’s masthead – upper and lower case in black lightface on white for ‘Dorset’, followed by capitals in green bold on white for ‘Echo’ – is quite a clean brand.
But content boosts around the masthead containing too many capitals, changing typefaces and tints resulted in an ugly display headache on Monday 9 September.
There were capitals in white lightface and bold fonts on green, yellow capitals in bold on green, and then – for me the worst – capitals in black lightface and red bold on yucky yellow.
This potpourri was squeezed by a lack of leading between the decks of masthead, dateline and boosts, and cluttered by the tiny lamb-child-man cut-out and sports section images.
And I wasn’t gripped by the boost lines themselves, especially ‘You know The Score’ and ‘Join the tea revolution’; but more on the tea later.
The main ‘HEARTBROKEN’ headline and ‘Vandals attack headstones’ subheading were much clearer, introducing a mum and daughter distraught at their (great) granny’s vandalised grave.
This is a relatively common but newsworthy topic, and I carefully read the story on page two: unfortunately, this failed to name the deceased relative, a poor omission given that local readers might have remembered her or known the family.
No matter, I thought, I can see a name in the huge headstone picture on page one, but then found that this reads: ‘In loving memory of George Read, a dear husband, father and grandfather’.
This was strange, as there was no mention of granddad George in the story, and so rather than helping the reader the picture only added confusion.
Oh well, these things can happen, but it didn’t make for a smooth entry to the Echo, which was further interrupted by the kicker ‘Walker flown to hospital following ankle injury’ on page two.
This story stated that ‘the person suffered the injury whilst taking part in a water sport activity’, which disputed the ‘walker’ headline, and it ended with an empty quote: ‘Eyewitness Andy White, who saw the helicopter landing, said: “I was some distance away to know exactly what was going on.”’
Neither of these stories appeared to have been desked properly – and I realise that this may well point to resource rather than skills issues.
There were plenty of bright community stories throughout the Echo – perhaps too many in a balance of hard and soft news (for those of us not convinced by the Bristol Post’s recent lifestyle push).
Soft leads included ‘Hang up festival hats with pride’ on page three, ‘Event’s a real show-stopper’ spread across pages four and five, ‘Trees feel the chop as path takes shape’ on page six, ‘Yoga for you and the bump’ on page nine and ‘What a feat’ on page 11.
There was a stronger ‘Family escape in fire drama’ lead on page seven and a solid ‘Sign up and save lives’ health spread on pages 12 and 13, but even with the headstone splash this meant only three main hard news stories on local pages.
Not enough, I’d suggest, especially when seven pages were then spent on ‘taste’, a worryingly weak food and drink section.
This began with a poster front headlined ‘Something’s brewing’, turning to a tea spread on pages 18 and 19 with too many forced headlines: ‘It’s time to turn over a new leaf’; ‘Our Dorset brew’s causing a storm in a teacup’; and ‘New blend creating a stir across the UK’.
Four of the pictures filling this spread showed a woman’s steps for, er, making tea…
Next came single page features reviewing Jamie Oliver’s latest book and another TV chef’s show on the Good Food channel, then two single but worthwhile puzzles and entertainment pages.
Don’t get me wrong: I like a cuppa (Earl Grey please), but a single headline and one-page feature on tea could have saved two pages, and no-one would have missed puffs for ubiquitous Jamie or wannabe Valentine Warner.
Perhaps I’m a philistine, but for me this roomy feature section felt too fluffy in a tight, 32-page book and could have been cut back to provide more space for news and sport.
It was a Monday, of course, and perhaps the muddled front page and light news touch was a rarity, but I think some better efforts – or more resources – are needed to satisfy Dorset readers.
As it was, there were around 70 stories on 15 news pages, about 20 (including letters) on eight features pages and just 16 reports on nine sports pages.
The Newsquest-owned Echo, with a cover price of 50p, sold 15,195 in the first half of 2013, a year-on-year decline of -6.9pc.
This is not too steep compared with other regional dailies, but it’s more noticeable coming just three years after the title was celebrating a +2.1pc rise to 18,396, which at the time was put down to a ‘back to basics’ approach to newsgathering.
It’s important to note that experienced and award-winning editor Toby Granville now has a lot more on his hands, as he’s also been editing the Bournemouth Daily Echo since 2011; this title recorded a -11.4pc decline in the first half of 2013.
Let’s hope new Newsquest boss Henry Faure Walker makes sure the publisher is not squeezing too much out of too little resource at these titles.
While Walker’s background suggests he’s going to be planning Newsquest’s digital future, he needs to help editors take just as much care of print, which still provides the vast majority of revenue.
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The ‘tiny lamb-child-man’ is a bit disappointing. I was expecting some sort of Dorsetian hillbilly mutant . . .
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Cue Duelling Banjos…
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It’s time Dyson got a life.
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Readers do not notice anyway, design is over rated by editors in the first place
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Observer – stop reading then if you don’t like it – what an empty pointless comment.
I enjoyed the piece – and he’s right about the ‘desking’ of stories. It’s something increasingly being ignored in the ‘right first time’ ethos of quick space filling. But the difference between a well desked and an undesked story is usually immense.
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Readers may not appreciate good design and layout, but poor design will have little impact and be reflected in sales. The colours used give the product a pretty down market look, in my opinion.
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Readers probably don’t analyse newspaper design. But, as with any product or object, they can tell if it feels right or wrong. The look of a newspaper is an expression of its personality – if you get it wrong, the reader will notice. Look, for example, at the templated JP weeklies; circulation has plunged because they have lost their character.
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Why do newspapers still think bragging amount the number of pages in a supplement matters?
Just beggar’s belief when every word of a blurb is so precious
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It’s time Dyson got a proper job.
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Spot on Shipwreck. Templates from Spain, ads from India. No wonder the papers have lost their identity.
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Dyson would give birth if he could see the layouts of some of the pages in the Lymington Times/New Milton Advertiser. Stories are thrown on them at will. I itch to redesign their pages. However they are great papers, they are very reflective of the areas they serve and are packed with ads.
Part of the reason must be that production costs are low – there is no colour – and the cover price for 44 broadsheet pages is only 40p. The ads must be similarly cheap.
Another factor is that the papers are family-owned, therefore there are no profit targets to meet and shareholders to keep happy.
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Always finds Steve’s reviews interesting, plus always intriguing to see how other papers are faring and handling news given the pressures everywhere of fewer staff, etc. There is clearly no magic formula but different papers have different ways of going about it. Keep it up Mr Dyson.
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‘… which disputed the [page two] headline…’, ‘…neither of these stories appeared to have been desked properly…’
I thought this was a journalism website – don’t you mean ‘contradicted’ and ‘thoroughly looked at by the newsdesk’
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doh – obviously I missed off the question mark on the above comment
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Many thanks to all for the comments. I couldn’t agree more with ‘Former sub and glad to be out of it’ re. the Lymington Times. I reviewed it here back in January 2012 http://htfpnew.adaptive.co.uk/2012/news/dyson-at-large-back-to-the-future-with-broadsheet-weekly/. Archaic magic!
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Pat Edwards is right to correct ‘disputed’ for ‘contradicted’ – much better meaning. But I think that in journalism, desk has become a verb, albeit slang. ‘He desked my copy’, ‘have you desked the splash?’, who’s desking that feature?’. Irregular, informal, technically incorrect? Maybe. But ‘desking’ and ‘desked’ is news room parlance. Or am I the odd one out?
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I’ve never heard anyone use the word desk in such a way. And if they did they’d get a smack in the chops.
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You’re probably right, Kendo, and I love the word ‘chops’! But have a read of this: “In a single work day, we might head a task force, eye an opportunity, nose around for good ideas, mouth a greeting, elbow an opponent, strong-arm a colleague, shoulder the blame, stomach a loss, and finally hand in our resignation. What we’re doing with all those body parts is called verbing: using nouns (or occasionally other parts of speech) as verbs.” http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/verbingfaq.htm
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Desking is just another word for subbing. Quite common.
Four pictures of someone making a cup of tea though screams “oh no we have no picture-based feature this week…..”
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I’m with Steve on the use of the word ‘desk’ or ‘desked’ as a verb. Indeed his clarification of such usage had me thinking of my time at an evening paper.
As for desking and subbing being the same, I disagree.
Maybe the tea feature could have been improved. Would it have been a push to get pictures of the four top tea rooms in Dorset? (Four, assuming you go with the same layout).
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Observer and Disgusted Ex-sub have a point, although they have both made the mistake of pointing out it, as I also have in the past, in a silly way.
Mr Dyson, please appreciate that EVERY major regional publisher has now instructed editors to focus their efforts on digital. The newspapers themselves are now being treated as nothing more than ad rags, designed to squeeze the last out of a once very profitable market, while the publishers try to find a way to make their digital revenue-based business models work.
Despite all the debate about whether publishers should be investing in print and how much money digital currently makes, this is the reality.
Anyone who’s been in this business for any length of time knows that design is not something which sells newspapers or even makes people visit websites.
In your future reviews, please will you include the website and social media strategies too in order to give HTFP readers and idea of what’s actually being achieved by each team.
What would also help, if you could get it, would be a rough number of editorial staff in each centre. It would give people a great insight as to what can be achieved by some of the very hard-working journalists whose work you often rightly or wrongly criticise.
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Thanks for taking the time to comment in detail, Oliver.
I did, as I’m sure you realise, refer a couple or three times to probable ‘resource’ issues, and my hope that Newsquest “is not squeezing too much out of too little resource”. I’m quite aware that management eyes are often off the print product, and that the fault is usually not with stretched staff.
But I do take your point that it would provide great insight to review a brands entire output – online and social media, as well as in print.
My blog’s remit is to focus on the print product and what the buyer of the paper sees. However, I’ll bear what you’ve said in mind, and will try to incorporate extra online thoughts when possible in the future.
It’s even more difficult to establish staff levels without the blog becoming a day job rather than a review. But, where I can, I will (the blog before this one included the detail printed in the paper itself re. reporter numbers, for example).
Again, thanks for your considered input, Oliver.
Steve
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Yes, my comment was silly. It was just a knee-jerk reaction. I was simply trying to say “don’t be too serious about these things”.
I’ve had more than enough of pompous subs in my time, but I think Dyson’s comments are pertinent. I always read them (well, nearly always!).
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