No comments? Nobody cares?

Okay...I'll raise my hand. If nobody's reading/reacting, I will.

Lemme say I appreciate and understand white space and big pix. I remember how ground-breaking it was back in the day.

But I hate to see the last open space in our shrinking print-product news hole pissed off for a meaningless, inane "graphic." You know, a generic picture and a generic wad of text clumsily wrapped around the meaningless photo.

Trendy is tossing aside the front page for an index? For a tiny paper? No thanks, Rockford.

Want to sink into a by-the-numbers, cozily formulistic, boring and ndexy front? Nah, Bakersfield.

Go for the artiste's goofy broadsheet front that says nothing? No thanks, Norfolk (or Hamption Roads, wherever you are...is it Virginia or West Virginia? Or is there really a difference? I'm talking Virginan Pilot here...this should wake up at least a couple of responses)

So...if the web is our future, why don't designers step up and fix those pieces of crap.

Oh yeah. I'm a reporter, not a designer/editor. I didn't have the luxury of an editor for what I've just written.

So yeah, maybe I'm wrong/stupid/ungrammical. ButI'm just asking.

i don't understand what you're trying to say. papers all across the country have redesigned their papers to try and increase circ numbers, but it's not really working. because newspapers haven't thought about how to improve what's actually inside the papers to give readers what they want. it's like trying to fix a beat up car with a bad engine by putting on a new coat of paint. it's a facade, only skin-deep.

it's not the fault of design that newspapers can't keep up with the web, it's the end of newspapers as people's primary source of news and information—and i don't know of any newspaper that has come up with a solution to that problem.

some may disagree, but that's how i see it.

and this is coming from a designer two years out of college who would love to do real news design forever, but doesn't see it as a foreseeable option because staff sizes are shrinking and design jobs will be harder to come by. and the company i used to work for (i wasn't laid off) will most likely soon be transferring all page design work to a firm in india.

and i like the virginian-pilot!

I checked back in tonight from out here in the west. I'm surprised that my Virginia diss didn't stir the rabble.

Like I say, I'm a reporter. Or as you designers put it, a "content-provider."

I see my newspaper attracting supposedly record-breaking readership. You know, "eyeballs."

It's because we give readers "what they want." Real news.

Paid subscription is falling, though, thanks to our free website presence. The nebulous web "hits" are increasing.

Webbies laugh about the code words they embed to inflate hits. Here, it's been "Paris Hilton," "Ron Paul," "Lindsey Lohan." It fuels a couple of the "news"-aggregating blogs we crank out.

But the bucks still come from the work real reporters provide in the print edition.

Sadly, my newspaper's website presence is inconsistent and flaky.

People have to hunt and hunt for things. The news staff can't even find stuff we hustled to get posted.

Our web advertising revenue can't touch the print edition's cash flow. (Our website cannot finance the cost of news-gathering: print keeps us afloat.)

I and others worry that we can't keep giving it away.

Now I see competing papers hosing down their precious print real estate by pumping in meaningless graphics and generic content that can be shared between chain newspapers.

It's cheaper for them. But I'm on the verge of dumping my paid subscription I've had forever to one of Singleton's daily papers. (I'm talking LANG here.)

The set pieces and section fronts have become predicable and boring. When I dump my paid sub I won't bother to slooooowly try to call it up on the web, either.

For sure, publishers drool for the day they can dump pressmen, newsprint and ink costs, delivery guys, reporters, photogs, editors and off-shore circ reps. They can morph into a web-only "product."

ButI doubt that bloggers' idle musings, "citizen journalists'" slanted points-of-view or paid p.r. types' releases will cut it in the long run.

I'm long-winded. But I'm right.

Sorry, Danielle.

--LPS

Gee, judging from the comments in here, I must've missed part of that Font Conference video.