No longer ALLOWED to jump

Well done?

 

You all can kiss my charticles

Seriously, every story is different, and there should be no one hard rule on number of jumps. We've had those rules at times at my paper, and on occasion, we've said, 'the heck with it' and broken our jump rule when either news or design needs demanded it. Nobody canceled their paper in protest of 'too many jumps.'

 

Charlie, of course you should give a story what it's worth. And no question that 12'' feature isn't a feature. I use the 12" rule to make a story tight. Again, that's just in my head and not necessarily done.

 

Awesome. That's going in the sig.

 

I got your Sharticle right here.

 

Glad I can be of service.

 

I worked at a joint 15-16 years ago which insiututed, and enforced, a strict no-jump rule.

Idiotic.

 

Problem here, Drip, is that it is a hard and fast rule.

 

when i have to write stories for the very front page of our paper, i'm told right off: "make sure it's not so long that we have to jump it."
we're talking stories 500-600 words long. if i reach into the 650-700 word range, they're gonna cut it.

 

And people wonder why this business is going downhill.

 

When I got to this paper five years ago, jumps were not allowed. When they let me take control of last year's redesign, I and others here pushed like mad to bring them in. We were sick of the tiny news holes.

What we got were jumps from the front page. That has allowed our front page stories to be written to a length they deserve, not a length that will fit.

As for the inside pages, you have to do a good job giving space where it's deserved and cutting the hell out of other things to make it work. But it can work.

 

Are you in sports? And if so, do you really jump stories from one inside page to another? I've never seen that in the sports section, except for a couple of rare circumstances.