Explain this to me like I'm a 5-year-old

OK....the Sun-Sentinel apparently has decided that they don't want to jump their columnists (Hyde and Bianchi today) off the front of sports on Sundays, and this morning, that means their columns on the Miami and Florida games.

So on 1C, they run three paragraphs of a brief synopsis from Hyde and six paragraphs of the same from Bianchi with a sig, and then you get to the end of those paragraphs, and there's a line that says something like, "For Hyde's column, see page 3C" (I don't have the exact wording, I just took the paper to recycling).

And you turn to that page, and there's a whole Dave Hyde or Mike Bianchi column, from word 1.

Query: How is that possibly better than an actual jump itself? What's the point? You're still getting something that's incomplete and then having to turn to another page to get the rest of it.

Plus, you now have two redundant pieces of copy and waste a few inches of space.

What am I missing?

Anybody? Anybody?

 

It's all about sharing of the inside pages and not having both desks design and edit stories and pages for both games. Containing the columnists' blurbs to the front and running them in their entirety inside is the only feasible way to do this (since each paper's front page is different).

So for today's paper . . .

Orlando did the UF page inside . . . which was also used by the S-S.

Sun Sentinel did 1 UM-FSU page inside . . . which was also used by Orlando. Orlando did the other UM-FSU page inside . . . which was also used by the S-S.

So instead of the two desks having to design and edit 8 pages (1 front, 1 UF page, 2 UM-FSU pages times 2) . . . you had only 5 pages that had to be designed and edited (1 front times 2, 1 shared UF page, 2 shared UM-FSU pages)

Designing and editing those three extra pages would necessitate at least one more designer and 1-2 more copy editors. And there just are no such bodies there anymore.

 

Bodes well for the S-S that you're recycling the Sunday paper at 9 in the morning ...

I guess that logic makes sense, but surely they could do something better than a simple cut-and-paste job of the first X number of grafs. And six seems insanely excessive.

 

I've seen column summaries that are a few sentences on the front page. However, I've never seen the first few paragraphs of a column serving as the preview.

 

It wasn't a cut-and-paste job. Each columnist's blurb reads differently than the first few graphs of the column.

And it was only 4 sentences of Hyde and 5 sentences of Bianchi.

Needs to be at least that length because you are putting 100-point headlines and large photos on top of it. Can't really do that above 2 sentences without looking, well, even more ridiculous.

 

A) Yes, you're right..the blurbs were different.

B) Your explanation makes complete sense, certainly from a manpower and production standpoint.

Of course, whether it makes sense from the standpoint of the reader -- remember him? as they say -- is something else.

 

Moddy: I just turned 55 ... if I'm not old, I'm gettin' there....

 

Oh, alright. I didn't get that from the original explanation. That makes slightly more sense then.

Although putting a 100-point headline on top of a glorified teaser? Yeah, not so much.

 

Better a blurb: "Florida/Miami face ugly truth" - Joe Blow, page 3C than a summary.

 

Today's major metro in Florida has three full pages devoted to last night's Florida-LSU and Miami-FSU games, which sounds nice except that neither game was completed in time to make today's paper. Three pages of stuff written three days ago; I can go through today's sports section in about 90 seconds.