The Newcastle Chronicle’s splash on Saturday 17 January was ‘LAWLESS’ – reflecting how the city’s sexual offences were up 186%, assaults up 31% and robberies up 24%.
This became a decent and detailed article on pages two and three, but was reduced to a shouty, white-on-black design on the front – not only the main headline, but also the statistics – with nothing to read apart from an 18-word write-off that looked like a sub-heading.
Whatever happened to the idea of giving readers something to get stuck into on page one, as well as the headlines, then turning to the full stories inside?
The rest of the Chronicle’s front was also obsessed with multiple WoB headings: ‘From saints to sinners’; ‘PRAY FOR HIM’; ‘CHAOS AT COWGATE’; and ‘SKY’S THE LIMIT’.
Chronicle editor Darren Thwaites is a sound operator, and so perhaps he and his team have been told by audience research that this is what readers want.
It certainly feels like a decided change from the days when the Chronicle’s fronts were more often than not headlines, pictures and at least the beginnings of stories, with a second lead also starting on page one.
There are, of course, moments when nothing else but a poster-style splash will do, and one of the best regional fronts of 2014 was the Chronicle’s campaigning ‘P45DUE’ in April, which suggested it was time for Newcastle United’s Alan Pardew to go.
The Chronicle front page last year calling for the axeing of Newcastle manager Alan Pardew
This was a fantastic idea, superb design and something that would have gotten fervent Magpie supporters’ juices going – as well as making Pardew himself and the club think about what soon became fact.
But if papers bludgeon readers too often with huge headlines and bullet-point lists bleeding across blown-up pictures, are they not in danger of anaesthetising the instinct to pause, read and buy?
That debate aside, there were some strong and informative news stories inside the Chronicle, with upper and lower case headlines in restrained font sizes that allowed the copy to breathe at respectable lengths, including:
- ‘People power saves ice rink from the bulldozers’ leading page four;
- ‘More traffic disruption as Cowgate work begins’ leading pages eight and nine;
- ‘We’re doing so well we could soon outgrow our shipping container’ leading page 17, reporting on a booming brewery;
- ‘And you thought life was tough out there already’ leading page 20, on the latest cuts to children’s services; and
- ‘Rat stole from man he was looking after’ leading page 27.
However, there were too many other page leads where design and pictures were allowed to dominate to the detriment of the story, including:
- ‘David Ginola VS Sepp Blatter’ filling page six, when a montage of headline, picture and basic statistics unnecessarily filled four-fifths of the page;
- ‘A fuller flavour of the North East for airport’ spread across pages 10 and 11 with no fewer than seven pictures, five of them fairly meaningless scenes, dishes or rows of bottles;
- ‘Time is called on pub landlord and brewer’ leading page 12 – a good story but seemingly crammed in by three pictures taking up two-thirds of the page, including a quarter-page pint pot; and
- ‘The six month anniversary has just crept up on us all’ leading page 14, another interesting read once you got down to it, but with two huge pictures of the same man, including one where his black coat filled a fifth of the page.
Anonymous comments may soon appear underneath this blog, outraged that a former regional editor can bring himself to criticise when so few staff are doing such a sterling job at bringing out papers at all.
And, of course, it should be acknowledged that times have changed, ranks of subs desks have gone, templates have been introduced and yet deadlines still have to be met.
That said, the conscientious hacks up in Groat Market putting the Chronicle together will want to occasionally reflect on the product, which is the only way to keep standards as high as possible.
This is crucial at a time when the industry is striving to make headway online, because no-one knows exactly when (or even if) digital revenue trickles will become torrents, and it would therefore be madness to kill the golden goose of print too quickly.
The Chronicle’s story-count was 300-odd reads on 77 editorial pages in an 88-page book, which made the 60p cover price feel like good value.
Owned by Trinity Mirror, the paper sold an average of 34,954 copies a day in December 2014, down 11.4pc on the same month in 2013.
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I can’t agree with you on the front page Steve.
I have only ever been to Newcastle once, and i don’t know much about their local news. But i’ve heard it’s got a real reputation for the night-time economy, and i think that story – and the way it has been designed – would interest people and draw them in.
The football story across the top will resonate with all Geordies who saw their capitulation at Southampton earlier in the season; i’m not from the area but i know the pic is of a missing student (who’s body has now been found, tragically) and that pic would have been widely seen in the area in recent days and doesn’t need big explanation. Cowgate chaos is obviously a very local issue, so the Editor needs to be trusted to do his job.
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Write-off in capitals? I may not have SD’s millennia of experience, but those look an awful lot like uppers and lowers to me. Time the green ballpoint went back in its drawer, perhaps? As to the design, half the papers in the country look like this, and the rest are worse; I think it’s all right, myself. At least it tells you it’s worth picking up, the pic of the sprawling trollops is great and the head’s got to be WOB because the background’s black, because it’s night-time. Job done.
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Gotten, Steve? Gotten? From you? The world is collapsing around my ears.
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Many modern dailies look the same – all headline, no substance.
I remember when the Chronicle was a serious broadsheet with gravitas, a paper that commanded respect. Now, like many others, it’s basically a superficial ‘compact’ for skip-readers. I don’t blame staff – they’re working in difficult conditions, but readers expect value for money.
By the way, Steve, spare us the word ‘gotten’. I know the Yanks use it, but Britain had the good sense to ditch this Anglo-Saxon monstrosity 200 years ago.
It’s just about permissible in the phrase ‘ill-gotten gains’, but in any other context, it’s bloody awful.
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Good points on ‘gotten’ above: shameful Americanism. And thanks, Steerpike, re. prompting me to correct my erroneous capitals reference: all those p1 WoBs gave me snow blindness, but that’s a poor excuse…
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Lot of locals just seem to have a big picture on front. Suggests desperation rather than design. Papers once had their own character. Thanks to systems like Atex they now all the same. Boring.
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Gotten is not an American import. It was an English export.
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You must all know that the future of newspapers is visual content.
The pictures are all that matter these days.
That is why the photographer is king…..hold on a minute, where have all the photographers gone !
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Steve Dyson – I believe your apology for using the word ‘gotten’ to be misplaced.
‘Gotton’ was certainly a word used extensively by classic Victorian novelists – Anthony Trollope for instance.
I accept that the OED lists ‘gotten’ only with a cross-reference to ‘get’, and then describes it as American usage.
Nevertheless I suspect that ‘gotten’ was acceptable in ‘English’ English for decades.
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Sorry – pressed the button before I had checked my spelling!
Offstone early – glad to see you accept ‘gotten’ was once considered to be standard English. Not quite so long ago as you mention – Trollope was certainly writing a good bit less than 200 years ago.
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Steve’s review is a fair opinion and he’s earned the right to be listened to. While we’re in the spotlight, I’d like to thank our team for producing some brilliant journalism in 2014. The quality of our publishing is reflected not only in our newspapers but in the explosive growth of our web and mobile platforms. As Steve knows at first-hand, the North East is a region brimming with journalistic talent and endeavour. Well done to the team!
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Dyson is spot on. After the excellent P45DUE – front page of the year for me – this is just an awful mish mash. Clashing colour, headache-inducing type. But at least we know what excellence they can produce. Put it down to a bad day. You cannot blame everything on lack of subs.
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@ designfan
I would argue that does it matter, for example, if the Newcastle Chronicle looks similar to the Birmingham Mail? Readers in both those cities really don’t care.
And by the sounds of Steve’s review, the templates in place at the Chron are being used as base for styles rather than what each page should look like once finished.
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“explosive growth of our web and mobile platforms”. phew! deeply impressed.
Now tell us how much money this made compared to print income.
We all think Twitter and websites are fun, but where’s the serious money?
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Big Pictures, big headlines at the detriment of a story.
But no photographers on staff?
Sounds just like JP!
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“Gotten” is the robust, colourful American past participle of “get” and it is greatly preferable to the anaemic British “got”. It is wonderful to see it gaining currency.
But be careful. If you want to join the “gotten” revolution, do remember that even in American usage, the past tense is still “got” – “I found that a fox had gotten into the henhouse, so I went and got my gun.”
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Too…much….time…on…their…hands….
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Ok Roger Jones, what you are saying is that we should be using gotten from the get-go.
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@ Flossie the Sheep, NCJmedia have six staff photographers. Down a tad from when I was there.
I think maybe from the point of view of someone from outside the area the splash doesn’t make much sense, but from my perspective, living on Tyneside, it does, as do the tasters. The style certainly isn’t to my taste but I’m sure the colours attract attention which might help the 10% year on year sales decline. I’d certainly agree with having at least a par of the splash story on the front especially when it’s not unusual to see the story content actually appear on 5 or even 8.
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Trollope notwithstanding, gotten is rotten.
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Tog. My local rag splashed a huge pic on front, no copy and the story copy was relegated to page 7!! How does that make sense?
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On a technical point there is not a single WoB on the page apart from the Pray for Him head. WoB means White on Black? There’s plenty of white text overlaid on images and some White on Red and White on Blue.
Does the page work? Well it give the facts in short, sharp bites so it might draw the reader to buy the paper on the newstand.
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I like Steve Dyson’s reviews, but often I don’t agree with them. It’s a shame he lets them down by bringing in arguments such as ‘killing the golden goose’ and the ‘digital revenue trickle.’
It doesn’t look to me as though the Chronicle is trying to kill the golden goose, and while it might pain Steve to admit it, revenues from digital are rising quickly. Don’t let your reviews down by sticking your fingers in your ears to what is actually going on, Steve.
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Newspaper editors / designers / subs just don’t get it, these days you really have to convince people it’s worth picking up your paper, the casual buyer is key – they won’t read the front page, they will glance at it as they go past and see if it interests them.
They see headlines, not subheads.
So in this case what they see is:
LAWLESS (means nothing)
FROM SINNERS TO WINNERS (Football report, fans have probably already seen plenty about it on TV and online)
PRAY FOR HIM (means nothing)
CHAOS AT COWGATE (that one’s better, let’s hope it’s not old news…)
SKY’S THE LIMIT (means nothing)
Maybe go back to saying what the story is in the headline instead of summing it up (poorly) in one word and you might attract more readers…
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