Is there too much "soft news" on A1?

Unfortunately for you, the trend all over is more hard news online and more perspective/soft news in the hard copy. And I only think it's going to get more extreme over time.

 

There is talk every day about broadening/analyzing/contextualizing (it is The Times) the news elements on the website to make them deeper for the print product. Sometimes the execution is better than other days, but the A1 approach is not so much soft as it is thoughtful.

 

Exactly. Wasn't everyone clamoring for 'analysis?'

 

I had a former colleague who used to walk by my desk everyday and ask "Is there any good news in the paper today?"

 

Well, I completely disagree that anyone would have to turn to a print publication's layout decisions to be an informed citizen.

That said, I found this Sunday's Times A1 particularly ridiculous. The lead story was about New York loosening abortion restrictions. That sounds like a real news story, right? Well, if you got to somewhere around the jump (it might have been right before, but I remember it as right after), you read that the decision changes absolutely nothing. Federal law overrides state law on abortion rights, and New York was simply relaxing its policy to match federal law, not going any further.

So the lead story on A1 of the Sunday New York Times was about a local law with no effect on the status quo.

 

I think a broader problem for newspapers is that because of staffing and deadline issues, they favor "evergreens" and stories they can plan, assign, execute to covering stuff that happened during the day. Hence, the increasing proliferation of anniversary stories.