Phil Jasner breaks cardinal rule -- does he get away with it?

I've had editors tell me, never mind the headline, never mind the little score box that gets sunk into the story before any jump. They say, get that score up high, first numbers, etc.

Newspapers really like the belt AND suspenders AND elastic waistband approach, don't they? It's working so well too.

 

I don't think it works well, but it's better than reading a gamer-by-numbers.

 

Remember that the Daily News runs its game stories -- for the most part -- on a self-contained, inside, tabloid page. The story usually is the only thing on the page. There are no jumps.
Now, does putting the score in the ninth graf -- oh, my, god, the ninth graf! -- really warrant this much discussion. The presentation has a lot to do with what stops, or doesn't stop, the reader.

 

but, again, for the 900th time ... it wouldn't have hurt anything to move the score up. There are ample ways to do it without altering the story or blowing the drama in any way.

So why not do it?

Why not just humor the score geeks among us and get it up as high as possible, at least higher than the other non-final score he mentions?

Again, not bagging on Jasner, who is great. But it can be done. And if it can be done, I'd argue it should be done.

 

Clearly, anyone who reads a game story these days isn't doing so to learn the final score. Even if the reader didn't know anything about the game before picking up the paper/clicking onto the web page, the headline will say who won, and the score will be right above the byline.

I didn't really care for this story, but why must the score be in the first few grafs?

 

No. Never, ever count on headlines, cutlines, charts, boxes, etc. to do your work for you.

You take out some great information from a story because it's in a chart you lovingling crafted and the desk finds it doesn't have room.

You assume the headline will be Celtics win on late rally!!! so you write your story with that in mind and the headline will be something like Inscrutable Celtics surprise!!

You don't control what runs with your story so don't write your story as if you do.

(Not taking away from this story, which is really fine. I just didn't care for the "wait for it" bit.)

 

I read that story online. I had no idea what the score was until like the 15th graf. I don't know if you got the memo, but a lot of people are on this Internet thing now.

Seriously, though, I understand that the score might be right there in a box next to the story. So what? It doesn't cost you anything to get the final score up sort of high. I'm not as much a stickler as most ... I'll take the top five grafs. But get to it before the jump, please.

Meanwhile, the bigger issue here is not how far the score dropped, but that there's another score before it. Again, it wouldn't have cost anything to fix that, either.