by Louis Black
Dear
Mr. Black,
I feel I must comment on The Austin Chronicle‘s format change. I
have two general observations. First, I am an avid fan of Ken Lieck’s “Dancing
About Architecture.” The reason I liked it is because with one quick glance, it
tells you everything you need to know about what is going on. It even has names
and bands in boldface so that one is encouraged to skim through and get the
scoop on your favorite band or personality if you were lazy or in a hurry. Now,
it is broken into four tiny columns that completely stifle the
short-attention-span nature of the column.
My second observation is a little more troubling. While The Austin
Chronicle claims that the new format is motivated to “offer more
information” and “more opinions” to its readers, my seasoned eyes do not detect
a noticeable increase in the information content. What my eyes do see, however,
is a very uniform and dominating advertising format (look what has replaced
“Page Two”). After you read this letter, please skim through the pages of this
publication. What you will see is a page layout pattern dominated by
advertisements, with a uniform pattern on each page. The right-hand-side pages
are consistently dominated by advertisements. As no surprise, the ads many
times seem to overwhelm the printed word. No doubt, advertisers probably enjoy
this new format, and probably will not mind paying a little extra to have their
ad dwarf “Environs.” I do not have a problem with The Austin Chronicle changing their format to increase advertising revenue. I do not have a problem
with being told that the format change has been implemented to accommodate
“more information.” If, indeed, the main motivation behind the format change is
to make more money, and if the editors of The Austin Chronicle are not
being straight with their faithful readers, then your publication is no better
than the Jim Bob Moffetts or any other abusers of the public trust.
Sincerely,
Tyson Slocum
Don’t respond to letters, I always tell the staff. Invariably, when I’ve
re-read impassioned responses to readers’ attacks years later, I’m ashamed and
embarrassed and thinking I just should have shut up. “Only correct factual
mistakes,” I tell writers.
Yet, this is a response to the above letter because the concerns about the
redesign and how we conceive of the Chronicle are worth addressing. The
redesign is still in flux, as it will always be more or less in flux, because
the Chronicle is always, in some font or proofreading quirk, changing.
Case in point: A number of people had the same reaction as Slocum did to the
format of Ken Lieck’s column. The staff was split. The music staff made the
final decision. The idea behind the redesign was to provide more information
but also to give each section a structural coherence. Every aspect of the
redesign has been discussed and rediscussed. But we are still listening and
still in evolution. Starting this issue, “Dancing About Architecture” will run
in the same format as “Naked City,” jumping only once, from the front page of
the Music section to its own page.
The redesign of the Chronicle did not at all affect the
advertising-to-editorial ratio — roughly 50% advertising to 50% editorial, not
counting the classifieds. In the past, more often than not, we’ve run with that
ratio tilted slightly more towards editorial; with the recent extraordinary
increase in the cost of newsprint, we’ve had to be tighter on that ratio, where
possible. As we’ve been selling more advertising, though, we have been running
bigger issues with more editorial. Accommodating those ads into the design is a
fact of the business.
In the overall redesign we switched two pages of advertising. The lead pages
of the Politics and Music sections both moved from right-hand pages to left, to
be consistent with the rest of the paper, to get the section headings out of
the center gutter where they had been appearing, and, yes, to eliminate two
pages of awkward ad placement. You might be surprised how many advertisers
specifically request right-hand placement; after all, readers may not be
searching for their ads in particular, and placement is important to them. A
well-designed (well, we hope it is, anyway) Politics or Music page, on the
other hand, works as well on the left as on the right.
Aside from those two pages, however, the editorial format change has had
virtually no impact on advertising; it was motivated, as stated, by a desire to
add some arts and media columns and features — to provide more information for
our readers. “Environs,” for example, is laid out in exactly the same page
geometry as it was before the redesign.
“Page Two” is the name of this editorial column; usually — not entirely
coincidentally — it appears on page two of the issue. During the last
half-decade, it has also appeared, more irregularly, on pages four, six, and
eight. When we sell a number of full-page ads, we tend to run some of them at
the beginning of the issue because advertisers like them there, and it helps
the editorial layout because we get a better edit-to-ad ratio in the middle of
the paper.
One of our purposes, however, is to make more money and carry more advertising
so we can pay our staff and writers more — more advertising also means more
editorial. If a reader has a problem with the Chronicle carrying more
advertising, given this, we’d be curious as to why.
This article appears in November 10 • 1995 and November 10 • 1995 (Cover).