NYT LeBron sports front

I would be curious how many issues the Plain Dealer sold last Saturday compared to a typical Saturday. I'm guessing a lot of people who don't even consider buying the paper on most days bought them on Saturday.

And there likely won't be another day like that until a Cleveland team wins a title.

The NYT cover screams: "We're too cool to treat this as news."

Fine: We're too cool to read your shitty section.

 

LOL.

No one was buying a NYT as a commemorative, so their cover didn't let anyone down in that regard, and didn't cost them any newsstand sales.

And, every journalist who hates the Times front wishes they had the option of even considering something like that, even if they ultimately rejected it. And, in the rare case where something similar was appropriate, they wish they had editors with the balls to back them up and support it.

 

A lot.

But it was because of the event, not how it was presented.

If your team wins the Super Bowl, you KNOW you are going to have to print thousands of extra copies, long before you know what the pages will look like.

What's stopping any journalist from "considering" an idea like that --- even though it likely would be ultimately rejected?

We had such an editor in Fort Lauderdale a few years ago.

http://www.snd.org/2014/07/wallen-all-or-nothing-attacks-discourage-intelligent-risk-taking/

 

Completely, 100 percent false.

I've never wished for the option to be bad at my job.

 

I think that in any job, having the ability to be creative is helpful. In the creative process, lots of bad ideas may be tossed out there and rejected. But, one great idea may come from it.

If you don't have creative freedom, and you just stick with the safe, and the routine, greatness might never be achieved.

 

That's the thing: This is one of those bad ideas that should've been rejected.

It is NOT the one great idea that often comes from creative freedom.

It's a douchey, uninformative, uncreative, and factually inaccurate piece of newspapering.

 

I agree. I'm not saying they should have gone with it. it should have been one of those, "hey, how about this?" idea that gets rejected seconds after it is proposed.

Some of the funniest advertising ideas never get used. But, sometimes we would print a few copies because we would want them. You'd see rejected ideas decorating cubicles.

That's what should have been done here. This should have been, "wouldn't it have been funny if this is what we ran?" And, print a copy to hang on the wall.

 

It can be a combination of the event and a good layout. You can't do a typical layout and expect to see a significant spike in rack sales after an event like that. If you see a full-page layout/poster or something with a giant headline people will feel more inclined to pick a copy up. If you don't have a "special" layout, people will go back to what they normally do, and just read the story online for free.

 

The amazing thing is this isn't something that ran and slipped by everyone at the paper. According to the public editor piece, Banquet himself signed off on it.

The most infuriating part is how the people behind the idea said it spawned from the way the NYP treated the Kim/Kanye wedding, by running a short brief saying what horrible people they were. The LeBron stuff was actual news, not gossip fluff. It's as if they told anyone who cares about the NBA reading the NYT: You're an idiot for caring about this. Not shockingly, the original idea came from someone who didn't work in sports.

 

You're out of your element here, because you don't know how newspapers work. You like to think you do, but you don't.

Don't presume that any of us don't have the freedom to make decisions about our pages. I know I do.

 

YankeeFan is so far out of his depth right now. I don't design anymore but made bold white-space-style decisions all the time. Most of the best sections in this country are very aggressive and creative with design on special days. You see horizontal pages, poster pages, massive white space and other stuff all the time on design blogs.

Some of it absolutely is a waste of time. But some is compelling. And most bosses want their designers to feel like they are being intellectually challenged, for better or worse.

 

Reaction in some ways reminds me of a bunch of museum goers oooing and ahhing at some piece of shit work by Picasso.



Because of who did it, people pretend to be impressed because, well, there MUST be some genius involved, doesn't there? I mean, it's Picasso, right?

Same thing with the NYT. A piece of shit work that has some people bamboozled into thinking well, there MUST be some genius involved, doesn't there? I mean, it's the New York Times, right?