Selling points

J Kaufman · **Posted:** Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:18 pm

Golly! A newspaper that is "continuing to grow circulation. In addition, you will be working in a new state-of-the-art newspaper building with new Goss presses." [Illegals need not inquire.] And don't forget to bring your whetstone for honing copy.

Quote:

The Monitor -- a 50,000 daily, 55,000 Sunday AM serving one of the nation's fastest growing metropolitan areas -- is looking for a copy editor/page designer who knows Quark and InDesign and has strong news judgment; an excellent command of spelling, grammar and AP style; the ability to hone copy to a fine edge; and a knack for writing headlines that grab reader attention.

If you are the person we are seeking, you will get the chance to work with our eye-catching redesign, accomplished in consultation with the help of design guru Mario Garcia's Garcia Media organization, one of the world's premiere newspaper design groups. The new design was launched in September.

The Monitor is located in McAllen, in the economically booming Rio Grande Valley of Texas. We offer a challenging, fast-paced news environment, a competitive salary and excellent benefits at a newspaper that is continuing to grow circulation. In addition, you will be working in a new state-of-the-art newspaper building with new Goss presses.

Because of our location, fluency in Spanish is a plus, but not essential. However, if you want to learn Spanish, we provide a tutor who has helped many staffers on the road to fluency.

Although we prefer an experienced copy editor/designer, talented recent graduates will be considered.

If you have the skills it takes to help us achieve our drive for visual excellence, please send your resume and work samples to: Steve Fagan, Editor, or to Henry Miller, Assistant Managing Editor, The Monitor, 1400 E. Nolana Loop, McAllen, TX 78504 You can e-mail your resume to: sfagan@themonitor.com ; or to hmiller@themonitor.com.

We are an Equal Opportunity employer. However, non-US citizens wishing to apply for this position must ALREADY be in possession of all appropriate documents allowing them to work in the United States.

Wabberjocky · **Posted:** Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:02 pm

Quote:

Although we prefer an experienced copy editor/designer, talented recent graduates will be considered.

When employers say this, what they're really saying is: "We want someone really good for an entry-level wage, so we'll probably have to settle for somebody truly entry-level."

Editer · **Posted:** Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:13 pm

The Monitor (where a friend of a friend works) does indeed have an eye-catching design, for what that's worth, and it's shouting distance from the border, so there are a lot of non-citizen folks in the area; I would guess that the last graf in the ad has boilerplate status in those parts.

I'm having a hard time caring about the Goss presses, though.

McGarry · **Posted:** Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:33 pm

Are there any newspaper redesigns Mario Garcia hasn't done in the past 10 years?

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:31 pm

And tell me again how said redesigns are increasing circulation.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:39 pm

"Redesigns" collectively are the biggest fraud ever imposed on the newspaper industry. But try telling that to a managing editor.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:12 am

I do hope all those page designers who were feeling so secure are learning HTML.

tommangan · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2008 2:32 am

I don't think redesigns are a fraud -- meaning, something false.

Redesigns are real, but the benefits are illusory because all a redesign reflects is the advent of print design technologies that make sophisticated design and typography available to lay people.

We made all these design changes because the technology allowed it. We change because we can, regardless of whether we should.

Look at the Web: The obligation to design a site that works across multiple browsers and platforms essentially forbids changing the design from day to day (it's simply too much work), so most online newspapers are happy with a design that never changes. The format is every bit as locked in as lead type was (how's that for irony?).

All I know for sure about design is that I have worked with some of the absolute best in the world and our circulation still went down. Perhaps they slowed the decline, but as far as I know investment in design has not bought us any new readers.

Unfortunately, the only people coming up with any innovation in newspapers in the past 20 years were doing it on the design side.

I think if you look deeply at what's become of newspapers you'll find the blame is not really in the newsroom: it's our most likely readers -- affluent, educated people -- moving to the suburbs where no news happens. They move there precisely to get away from the crime, corruption and confusion that provide the stories that fill our pages.

Stuff happens in the burbs, for sure, not much you'd care to write about or read about.

Editer · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2008 12:51 pm

tommangan wrote:

Unfortunately, the only people coming up with any innovation in newspapers in the past 20 years were doing it on the design side.

Someone just made a point to me: Media companies, including newspapers, don't spend squat on R&D. Companies in every other industry spend as much as 1 percent of revenue on research and development, but us news folks fall way short.

Of course, every time someone *does* do some research they get mocked (try mentioning "eye-tracking" on this board and you'll see what I mean). Most research is being done by academics and nonprofit foundations, and a lot of people in the industry don't take them seriously (mention "academics" or "Poynter" on this board and you'll get a further taste).

So on what authority can anyone assert that every redesign is a fraud? It's a lot easier to blather than to speak knowledgeably, because knowledge takes time and money to amass, and newspapers et al. are not spending the time and money.

Quote:

I think if you look deeply at what's become of newspapers you'll find the blame is not really in the newsroom: it's our most likely readers -- affluent, educated people -- moving to the suburbs where no news happens. They move there precisely to get away from the crime, corruption and confusion that provide the stories that fill our pages.

Stuff happens in the burbs, for sure, not much you'd care to write about or read about.

Those stupid readers, not doing what we want them to do. Don't they realize it's their responsibility to come to us?

tommangan · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:02 pm

People's habits change.

We can't make people want to read the newspaper or even care about news. Can't blame people for exploiting the option of not having a carpet of dread delivered to their doorstep every morning.

paulwiggins · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:55 pm

Heartodixie wrote:

I do hope all those page designers who were feeling so secure are learning HTML.

Line by line programming is becoming iincreasingly irrelevant. And a reminder to employers: stop asking Quark users if they know InDesign. The transition can be made in half a day.

Jonathan Kleinow · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:44 am

Editer wrote:

Someone just made a point to me: Media companies, including newspapers, don't spend squat on R&D. Companies in every other industry spend as much as 1 percent of revenue on research and development, but us news folks fall way short.

Of course, every time someone *does* do some research they get mocked (try mentioning "eye-tracking" on this board and you'll see what I mean). Most research is being done by academics and nonprofit foundations, and a lot of people in the industry don't take them seriously (mention "academics" or "Poynter" on this board and you'll get a further taste).

So on what authority can anyone assert that every redesign is a fraud? It's a lot easier to blather than to speak knowledgeably, because knowledge takes time and money to amass, and newspapers et al. are not spending the time and money.

Thanks for making this point. It seems a little hypocritical for us to, on the one hand, bemoan the sorry state of our industry and on the other, to demean every effort to innovate.

Yeah, I'm a designer, and yeah, I went to Poynter for a design fellowship, and yeah, I work at a paper that did a Mario Garcia redesign, and yeah, you guys probably think it looks like a cross between People magazine and USA Today. But the editors didn't sacrifice the concept of good journalism at the door of the art department.

We still put out good, thorough investigative stories, dominate breaking news for our area and cover not just what our readers think is important, but what really is important for them.

Of course redesigns aren't the be-all, end-all of newspaper salvation. All they do (at least the good ones) is keep the information in the paper organized easily for readers and keep the appearance of the paper modern and sophisticated. And if the look changes every few years, then look around you at every other form of media and communication. Advertisers polish their logos, the TV stations get new graphics, even NPR's updated the theme song to Morning Edition. What's "in" evolves constantly. You don't wear the same clothes you wore in 1987, and the paper doesn't look like it did in 1987 either.

Pooh-pooh designs and redesigns if you want, but I'd rather you spent your energy figuring out what we should be doing to save our own hides.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:41 am

I have worked through more "redesigns" over the years than I care to count. All of them have created more busy work by incorporating such things as multiple briefs packages, graphics for the sake of graphics, endless refer boxes and various other labor-intensive features that divert editors' attention from editing. Many such features are unsustainable in the long run and usually disappear after people finally realize that they burn up too much time.

I have yet to see a "redesign" that did not either make the newspaper less easy to read or make no difference at all. In all cases, the "process" of redesigning has distracted staff from the news and the transition from layout to "design" resulted in a simple but important task becoming a major production.

All of this contributed to newspapers becoming design-driven, as opposed to news-driven. It's why unrelated or barely related "art" dominates pages. It's why editors get more unrealistic headline orders than ever. It's why we have at least three times as many people "designing" pages than we need.

The "fraud" I mentioned involves the exorbitant fees charged for "redesigns" by outside consultants. It's a racket.

dmfugitive · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2008 11:31 am

The only thing I know about redesigns is that a newspaper could eliminate all color from its pages, eliminate all photographs, remove all graphics and breakouts, require every story to be 30 inches or longer, make every headline a 1-18-3, and just build every page on a six-column grid from top left to lower right, and people will still complain that "you're just trying to look like USA Today."

Editer · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:24 pm

I suspect No. 1's head exploded when the WSJ started putting color screens in its front-page boxes.

More substantively, I've not only seen the redesigned KC Star (that's the paper you're talking about, right, Jonathan?), I've read it as a reader while on vacation, not an editor, and I found it much easier to work with than most papers today, including the WaPo and the NYT. Rather than dazzle, the design pulled me in and was easy to navigate. I'd say Mario Garcia earned his fee on that one.

My last employer implemented a similar though less radical redesign recently, and it's had a similar effect. The pages are easy to look at and read. And AFAIK they didn't lay anybody off in the process.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:31 pm

The Kansas City Star has many serious problems that a "redesign" can do nothing to resolve, except perhaps hide one or two of them.

tommangan · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:40 pm

Actually we've always assumed as a matter of course that falling circulation was the problem.

Out here our circulation has leveled off but advertising has cratered, which is odd because advertisers presumably are interested in any audience, anywhere.

Jonathan Kleinow · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2008 11:24 pm

Phillip Blanchard wrote:

The Kansas City Star has many serious problems that a "redesign" can do nothing to resolve, except perhaps hide one or two of them.

Care to expand on that thought?

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