Monday, April 8, 2002
Wall Street Journal Color and Pics
Tomorrow, Tuesday the 9th, something big happens at The Wall Street Journal. They are going to begin using pictures and color. It is the first major redesign of the paper in 77 years.
What an interesting time to do a story about how newspapers have changed. I think it would be an interesting TV story to show how newspaper front pages get produced. Maybe it would be an interesting web feature to show some of your town’s most historic fronts. How have newspaper designs changed? What will people, especially the business folks, say about the new WSJ design?
Poynter.org will do a lot on this story in the coming week. Our Poynter colleague, Mario Garcia, has designed more than 400 newspapers and helped oversee the WSJ overhaul. Here is part of an interview with him: “Some might say that using the color is going to somehow compromise the gravitas of the paper. That is one of the great myths. There is a whole generation of readers — particularly those between 30 and 45 years old — who do not equate color with being less serious. The New York Times — one of the most serious papers in the world — went to color in the last two to three years. You would have to find a very old reader who would equate color with a less-than-serious paper or who would see color as taking away from the gravitas of a paper. The 25-to-35 year-olds don’t remember life without color television, so they don’t attach black-and-white to a more serious paper. All the focus groups show that.”
Gulf of Mexico Black Water
A week ago I sent Morning Meeting readers information about a curious patch of “black water” in the gulf of Mexico that was drifting toward South Florida. Scientists still do not know what it is. But clues are emerging, including dead sea life. The Naples Daily News says, “Dead and dying sponges crumbled in Ken Nedimyer’s hand as he made his way along the bottom of the Northwest Channel off Key West last week. Nearby, brain corals had recently died or were dying as well, the tiny animals that build the corals decaying in their chambers. Not everything was affected, but other corals normally golden brown had an odd white crust on them, Nedimyer noted last week and in dives over recent days since black water from the Southwest Florida coast bathed the keys.”
• Latest on the Black water from the Florida Marine Research Institute.
• Pictures from NASA.
Campaign to Turn in Violent Students
The Associated Press reports: “Now a new national media campaign is being started to encourage more students to speak out against violence at schools. ‘Silence Hurts,’ a campaign that began in Florida, is being launched nationally this at the International Youth Leaders Crime Prevention Conference in Orlando. Campaign officials will try to get local TV stations to air public service announcements about the need to speak out if a student carries a weapon to school. ‘A teen-age peer is more powerful than an adult when talking to other students about violence,’ said David Voss, campaign manager for ‘Silence Hurts.’ An association of school public relations officials started the campaign in Florida after 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill shot and killed teacher Barry Grunow at Lake Worth Middle School. A fellow student knew Brazill had a gun but kept silent. The Florida program was modeled after Palm Beach County’s ‘Tell Someone’ program, started after Grunion’s murder on May 26, 2000.”
