Jumping backward

So you're not always on the back page?

Seems like that might be a bit more confusing to the readers. If it was on the back page every day, readers know to turn to the back page immediately if they want sports.

 

Not a big deal. We do it ourselves. Usually Mondays and Tuesdays we are 10 pages and have sports on the back and have a jump to nine on Mondays. The rest of the days we are the front of the B section.

I've seen a major metro do something similar with their business section for a while.

In this age with declining tools, I'm more worried about content.

 

When we first finally started doing color (2005), I seldom got color because they would only give me the back page when sports needed only one page. Their thinking was, I'd be starting on the inside and jumping back to the back page and it would waste color, in a sense, because my main art would be on the inside in black and white.

When a new ME took over, he wanted sports on the back every day, no matter what, to take advantage of the color and so that people could flip the paper over and check the back, much like what was mentioned above. That was when I looked at older papers and noticed that in the 70's, this paper used to jump sports backwards all the time.

Just to make sure there's no confusion for the readers, at the top of the first inside sports page, I put a banner that says "The 'Front' of the Sport Section is on Page (whatever the back is)."