The Cook County News-Herald is a member of the Minnesota Newspaper Association (MNA). We receive many benefits from our affiliation with MNA—legal guidance, training opportunities and perhaps the most valuable, the opportunity to network with writers, publishers and editors from other newspapers.
We interact not only with folks from MNA, but from across the country through our involvement with the Better Newspaper Contest. Newspaper people from other states serve as judges in the Minnesota Better Newspaper Contest. In years past, our Minnesota papers have been evaluated by news folks from Maryland, Missouri and Iowa.
As a writer at an MNA newspaper, I recently had the privilege of being a judge in the Iowa Better Newspaper Contest. It was an interesting and rewarding experience. Rewarding because I was returning the favor for those newspaper folks that served as judges for the Minnesota Better Newspaper Contest. And delightfully rewarding when I received a $10 gift certificate for Barnes & Noble in the mail in return for my efforts.
It was not an easy task. None of the newspapers I received to review were immediately eliminated. My assignment was to select the top three newspapers in categories such as Breaking News, School Coverage and Editorial Page. I was able to complete the rating on-line, rating the papers from 1-10 with 10 being the best. There were no papers that received less than 8 in my opinion. I was able to narrow the 8 – 20 newspapers in each category to about five issues with a 10 rating.
From there it became a matter of style over substance. The editorial content was excellent, so I was forced to look at how well things were laid out. Were the page jumps broken appropriately? Were there “widows or orphans” in paragraphs and columns? Were the photographs appropriate? After an excruciating process I was able to select a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finisher.
As I evaluated the papers, it was interesting to see the different newspaper header styles, editorial policies, photo layouts and more. Many of the ideas were things I wouldn’t mind seeing in the Cook County News- Herald. Others however, made me think, “Why?”
One of the things that was consistent in the Iowa newspapers was busyness. Nearly every paper had multiple teasers on the headers of all sections with a couple of photos and text of all sizes and colors. There were sidebars with weather and calendar of event items.
To me it is distracting to have all that information crammed into a space with little white space. In discussion with my coworkers, it appears there is consensus on this. When we were talking about this in the office, I blamed the clutter on
Sesame Street.
I remember watching my sister and younger friends watching the educational program as it rapidly flashed out “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…ten!” followed by the letter of the day, the word of the week and the color of the minute. Although I enjoyed the puppetry, I recall thinking that this frantic pace was distracting.
Now that frenetic pace has become standard for just about everything around us. We can’t just watch television, we have to have images advertising the next show popping up in the corner or a banner scrolling news across the bottom. We can’t just see ads in a newspaper or a sales flyer, ads are now on bathroom stall doors or painted on the floor of big box stores. It seems that we can’t concentrate on just one thing anymore and the front page of many newspapers seems to reflect that.
News-Herald writer Brian Larsen called it the USA Today syndrome and I have to agree. With the debut of the newspaper that attempts to cover the entire United States in its pages came the idea of snippets of news splashed across the front page.
I don’t care for it and the Iowa newspapers that ended up in my top three reflect that. Of the five fabulous papers that I had to narrow down to 1st, 2nd and 3rd, I selected the ones that had the most white space; the least cluttered pages. I had the opportunity to write comments, to give feedback on why I made my choices. On each of the top three, I complimented the writers and layout folks on allowing some breathing room for readers.
It makes me wonder if the Cook County News Herald will ever win an award in the Minnesota Better Newspaper Contest. We buck the trend of jamming photos or inserting text in every inch of the paper. We like the open space around our Howard Sivertson News-Herald bears. It not only gives our printer space to add an address for the papers being mailed, it gives a reader’s eyes a break.
The Cook County News-Herald is 123 years old. There is a grand tradition of being a newspaper, of looking like a newspaper. As an independently owned, local newspaper we don’t have to jump on the USA Today track.
We get notes from subscribers far and wide every day that tell us they love “our little paper.” Readers stop by the office to say they appreciate our coverage of local events and they enjoy the use of the Sivertson bears in our layout. That means more to us than any newspaper award.
Thanks readers!
Perfection is achieved, not when there
is nothing more to add, but when
there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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