JaySmall.com/old

As I read through the whistle-stops in yet another depressing conversation about newspapers cutting back, I'm reminded of where I like to go to see some of the most creative work coming out of all those "dinosaur" newsrooms.

NewsDesigner.com consistently gets the scoop -- from preview prototypes to post-launch reactions -- when well-known newspapers roll out new designs. That makes the blog must reading for me, since I spent the first 10 years of my professional career as a designer and art director, and several years prior at the little paper my family ran learning about typesetting and print production.

So I like to peek in on the projects to see how trends in typography, sectioning, use of color and overall information packaging change. Unfortunately, having checked out several recent projects, I'm coming to a belief that gives the old art director in me the creeps.

Design friends, I feel guilty for this, but here it is: American newspapers invest too many of their shrinking resources on design.

Why would I say that?

First, an inside-pool example: Too many newspapers still pay full-time employees to create from-scratch illustrations for feature stories, in particular. Forget about Society for News Design awards. You cannot demonstrate a return on investment in staff time for commercial illustrations, and with rare exception, you can't tell me they're journalism.

More economically efficient art directors hire free-lance artists for illustrations, but I've been there, kids: Too often, the free-lance budget gets cut and staffers wind up taking on illustration duties because assigning editors want to make a story into a centerpiece, can't think of alternatives and are running out of time.

Readers, frankly, couldn't give a rat's rump about that planning problem. And news executives who cut free-lance illustration budgets are blind to the inefficiency of their decisions.

But that's not the most profound example of excess design investment. Too often, I believe, newspapers embark on major redesigns even when they don't meet one of my Three Strategic Criteria for Redesigning a Newspaper:

1. The newspaper's presentation is so badly broken that a redesign will make it measurably easier to read and/or comprehend each day's contents.
2. News organizational workflow is so badly broken that a redesign, and associated process improvements, can actually save measurable resources for other things -- or save cash if you just don't have anything else to spend it on (pshyeah, right!).
3. The newspaper's content itself is so badly broken that it needs to be completely overhauled, and a redesign in that context brings measurable economies of scale to that overhaul.

The first two criteria only very rarely fit -- most newspapers long ago achieved affluence of competency in design. The third probably fits too often but is least likely to be a driver for redesign. Nowadays I see too many major redesigns happening for less profound reasons:

• Downstream production changes, such as changes in form factor. Many American newspaper publishers have reduced the width of printed pages in recent years to save money on paper, as newsprint costs have risen. And obviously, certain design mechanics must change to conform to changes in page shape. But that's not always a cue for a total overhaul, unless one of the strategic criteria also comes into play.
• Management changes. New bosses want to make their marks, and a redesign is the most visible way to do that. With halfway modern editorial systems, a redesign also can be implemented a whole lot faster than, say, rethinking beats, story lengths, tone and community-building as a way to address the third strategic criterion.
• Just to get attention in a crowded information marketplace. Editors see those circulation reports, too, and some hope cosmetic changes will attract new eyeballs -- giving them another chance to figure out how to hold attention once gained.

As cases in point, I commend to you the two most recent newspaper redesigns featured on NewsDesigner: the Los Angeles Times and the St. Petersburg Times.

Please understand: I am not criticizing the design work itself in either case. Both projects improve the overall aesthetics of the newspapers noticeably. Both represent better design thinking and execution than, certainly, I could have provided.

But both projects started with good materials: newspapers that already had long since achieved overall competency of design format, with very familiar structures to their respective bases of readers. The papers' old forms were reasonably readable, well organized and well printed.

A redesign, in either case, can improve readers' perceptions only in mild increments -- and only among people who aren't averse to change, which leaves a bunch of folks out, I'm afraid.

Of the two projects, from outside looking in, it appears the St. Pete team attempted more changes to content and organization than did L.A., including some new niche sections and features. So of the two, it appears St. Pete came much closer to my strategic criteria.

The L.A. project, launched amid well-publicized upheaval at the newspaper and its parent company, looks great but it is what it is: well-applied cosmetics to mask a candidate for major surgery.

In either case -- in fact, in any of the redesigns you can see on NewsDesigner.com from the past two years -- would you honestly expect a measurable return on investment? How much does the needle have to move to make the redesign worth the time and money you could have spent on other things?

More readers? Hmm. Given that any redesign -- even a much-needed one -- probably ticks off as many people as it pleases, I doubt that.

Work efficiencies? Maybe, but the various design chiefs asked by NewsDesigner about their projects rarely list them as motivators.

Instead, conversations about redesigns zero in on mechanical considerations, font choices and soft rationale such as "more [inviting|dramatic|engaging|respectful of your time]" or "easier to [hold|read|find|scan|navigate]."

How are such ideals quantified? On in-house projects, seems to me they usually aren't. You buy the new typefaces, install the redesign, wait for readers to respond anecdotally, smile at generic compliments, and as critics inevitably zero in on details of changes they hate, you adjust.

Of the many independent consultants in newspaper design, I find that my pal Alan Jacobson makes the most tangible effort to show bottom-line results. That, I think, is why he tackles the "revenue-side" projects such as classified ads with as much zeal as news/editorial columns -- and probably also why his projects yield more radical departures from newspaper design standards than others I see. (And no, Alan's not paying me to write this. He doesn't even know I'm writing it.)

Meanwhile, on the Internet side of things (where everything is measurable but you have to decide whose measures to trust), respected usability experts warn us to avoid total Web site overhauls in favor of strategic design incrementalism. I don't agree in every case, but often I do. And I believe the line of reasoning applies as well to printed periodicals as Web sites.

So if I am a publisher of a competent American newspaper with a spare dollar to spend, how do I make best use of it? Tie a snappy new bow around the information I know how to provide? Or change what I know about providing that information to adapt to changes in what people need and expect from me?

If you read to this end, you know my answer.

Update 5:38 p.m. ET 11/2/06: Thoughts from NewsDesigner.com on this post and the depressing circulation numbers for U.S. metro papers: "I have to think that if you’re working on a major redesign and you’re planning anything less than blowing up the current model of the print newspaper, you’re wasting your time and the publisher’s money."