More (bad) industry news

Has the flow at design centers changed so that this is possible? When an old shop of mine went to Design House, we would submit a budget by 4, (God forbid anything broke late) do all of our normal work as far as writing, editing and pulling wire content, tack on photos to stories with cutlines and add a suggested head but once we sent all the content to Design House at the end of the night, it was gone and out of our hands.
We would never get to see the finished product until it arrived on a doorstep in the morning.
Occasionally I could get an emailed pdf of the section but that would be after everything was sent to film and any emails or calls to the design center about changing the look would go unanswered.
As I said, it's been about four years since I worked at a shop that used a design center, so maybe things have changed. I hope they have.

 

Where I work we have NewsGate and we can see the page as it is being built. We do all that but in Gannett producers that web etc. can see the page as it is being built and have the ability to say "hey what the f*** is that? Lets switch that with xxxxx or if news breaks say lets move that off of page 1 and place breaking news on 1 and put story from 1 on 5 and that golf story on 5 can be taken off." Or whatever situation happens. That sucks if you have no control after 4 p.m. If the editors wanted they could have designers have pages set and maybe an hour before each deadline look through everything, but many don't and is part of the reasons pages/designs look like poo.

 

But it's Austin! Sixth Street! Live music! SXSW and ACL!

 

They still send your pages to film before they make plates? I didn't realize there were still papers that weren't direct-to-plate.

 

Frederick has to check in here soon to laugh at the pain.

 

I am at a shop that uses a design center but I have yet to experience a lot of these issues. I just make sure my budget is specific enough so they know what and how I want things. If something breaks after the budget has been sent, I let my designer know what to change, cut, delete, etc.
They send us the pages (pdf) and we're able to make changes and correction before they go to print.

 

I think we're getting hung up on the term "design center."

A designer at a "design center" is typically doing an entire section (or two) in his/her shift. Pretty much the same job as a designer at a newspaper without a design center.

 

Before I left my previous job, during the last six months, we had our pages done in another state, more than 10 hours away. Nightmare for someone who built own pages for 21 years. Had a system down and it worked. It was torn down and had to eventually throw in the towel. When you are forced to not care what the pages look like, it was time to move on as in online.

 

In the old days, we had a designer doing A1 and jumps, another doing the Local section, another doing wire pages. Not to mention those doing features and sports. Now one designer is usually doing the entire A, B and wire sections...sometimes for two papers at a time.

 

Yeah. The mental exhaustion, day to day and week to week, is mind-boggling.
Not much time to think, or plan, anymore. Just throw and go, and hope for no remakes.