Ed Henninger: If you fail to plan…
I first heard it years ago…and I’ve remembered ever since: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Some say it originated with Benjamin Franklin. Others aren’t so sure. Regardless, the quote is memorable—and it’s a sure reminder to editors that they need to work on their planning. For every issue.
During a recent conversation with some editors, I pointed out that the jump on a page 1 lead story was (to put it nicely) “text heavy.” I offered some ideas for improving the design:
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- More photos.
- Breaking the one long story into multiple shorter pieces.
- Use of pull quotes.
The problem with those suggestions is that they just couldn’t be worked out at 9:30 p.m., a half-hour before deadline. The layout person was swimming upstream and doing his best just to get the pages done in time:
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- No one knew how long the story would be.
- There were lots of good photos, but no space.
- No one had permission to move ads to create more room for the package.
- It was just too late to think of all that.
That last point was all too true: It was just too late to think of all that.
An editor, knowing that this was going to be an important story (remember: it was the page 1 lead), should have been working on a design plan much earlier in the day:
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- How can we segment this story into shorter pieces?
- How long do these pieces have to be?
- How about quotes for pullouts? With such an emotional story, surely
there will be some compelling quotes. - Who’s going to edit the story?
- Who’s shooting the photos? How many? What subjects? What angles?
- How do we create extra space for the jump?
- Can we move ads from that page?
- Whom do we ask to get the ads moved?
- What do we do to help Bob get this all designed on deadline?
Apparently no one in the newsroom had given such planning a thought. It never happened.
So, the one long story was written, with only a one column photo running with the 30-inch jump. No pullouts, no display photos…nothing to encourage those readers who followed the story.
Another quote applies: “If you keep doin’ what you’ve always done…then you’ll keep gettin’ what you’ve always got.”
How disappointing is that?