Visual Editors
Visual Editors, NFP was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in 2004.
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bburton
Bo
Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 536
Location: Orlando Sentinel
Posted:
Sun Jan 08, 2006 9:55 pm
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Actually, that part came easy. Our editor, Charlotte H. Hall, spend 25 years at Newsday. So we've slowly been taking more cues from tabloids: ie, shorter stories, more conversational headlines, alternative story forms, photography played boldly, story selection based on what's "interesting," not just what's "important"...
As a New Yorker, Charlotte also loves the Times. But she knows that we're not the Times and never should be. She and our publisher, Kathy Waltz, understand the Orlando market skews younger, is kinda quirky and doesn't have much spare time. It's also a diverse, transitory community without a real "there" there, and they want the paper to be the local town center. So the coming design improvements are meant to reflect that.
Basically, we didn't have to sell the powers-that-be because we have a mandate from them: More change implemented faster. As you can see, many of our most radical ideas were too much change. But that kind of blue-sky reaching really helped the newsroom get excited about what's coming ahead - and maybe helped writers feel better that it's not as radical as it could have been?
And really, who's going to miss GOP YIELDS TO INQUIRIRY OF DELAY on the front page? That might be one tip I can offer for selling new concepts: find pages that have awful examples of wasted newshole and show how the local writing gets more emphasis when that kind of stuff is removed.
P.S. Use the research to back you - the Readership Institute and Eyetrack studies support this kind of packaging. Readers don't enjoy the New York Times because they're seduced by long blocks of type without a lot of visual oomph, they enjoy it because it's the best writing out there.
You might also want to take a close look at another editor favorite, the Wall Street Journal, which has gone absolutely charticle-crazy in a very sophisticated way since Ron & Mario Garcia updated it....
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http://web.mac.com/boburton/iWeb/boburton |
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bburton
Bo
Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 536
Location: Orlando Sentinel
Posted:
Mon Jan 09, 2006 9:51 am
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Pink Eye - it's contagious! Catch it today!!!
What, you don't like our flamingo? This was a total joke, but somehow it got shown to the big-wigs in Chicago. Beautiful! 
I guess that's the only other real strategy that's worked for me: Make 'em laugh along the way, it wins you a different kind of bond with your editors. Mine, for instance, HATES Paris Hilton (who owns a night club here). So, I naturally build Paris into every prototype I do. During a discussion over 1A, we were told by our marketing folks that we couldn't mess with our nameplate too much right now, and they compared our brand recognition to Chlorox. Chlorox!  My editor and I were both bummed. You should have seen the Chlorox front page! I mean, you have to laugh along the way or things just get too discouraging.
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http://web.mac.com/boburton/iWeb/boburton |
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