Print Media Analysis

Newspapers are a dying breed-figuratively and literally. Not only are their circulation numbers shrinking, but also publishers are more than aware that the majority of their audience isn't getting any younger. They are fighting a losing battle against media that deliver information quicker, and in more easily updated formats.
Some have attempted solutions. Consolidation of information control under one gigantic publisher has meant one owner to several papers (e.g. New Times, Gannet,) which in turn means shared resources and reduced cost. Also, almost all have gone online (a waving of the white flag if there ever was one.) An elite few have leveraged long-standing traditions and critical acclaim into an internationally recognized brand (e.g. New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times). Most local and regional papers are not have suffered from delusions in minutia-partly because they cling so doggedly to regional points of view and interests; but mostly because of general foot dragging over the adaptation of new technology. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is in this group, and as such, it is essentially in a sink or swim state. They are willing to do whatever it takes to stay viable while desperately clinging to a facsimile of newsboy integrity. As a result, they walk a mighty fine line.
From featurizing news stories, to front page coverage of sporting events and weather, to painting national politics as more soap-operatic than it actually is (which is quite hard to do); to an increased reliance on graphics and oversized photographs. Today, none of these is taboo, though at one point in time all of it was.
Today, no section is safe. For this paper, section E, "Business Sunday," of March 25 2001, three-star edition was scrutinized. Examining the section's layout using media keys shows an acute awareness of the need to entertain as well as inform as the Post blatantly appeals to younger audiences while it nevertheless struggles to retain its core readership.

Function: News, Entertainment or Both?

To analyze the position of the articles on the page, we begin with what is the most important point on the page. Because of our Western reading style-left to right top to bottom-where we would naturally look first is upper left, top of a page, above fold.
The upper-leftmost corner of the page is the header of the paper, "Business Sunday." Skipping (for now) the graphic that is directly across from this header, we return to the left for "Bear markets play havoc with retirement cache," a column by Jim Gallagher, and the first article. Using this scanning method, next is "Downtown St. Louis shows net growth in commerce," followed by "Bowling chic is in vogue - and businesses strike it rich," and lastly, "Under Bush, food industry foresees easing of regulations."
Judging by our natural reading style, the columnist is in the key position, as dictated by tradition (hence the title 'columnist.') However, upon opening the paper, it is quite clear that the column, "Downtown," and "Under Bush," when viewed in relationship to the teasers at the bottom of the page, simply frame the "Bowling" article, a soft feature about the popularity of vintage-style clothing.
This is clearly not the most interesting thing on the page to the Post traditional audience. Instead, it is a move to entertain what they believe is a modern, younger, businessperson. It is a feature story, framed in attention getting perfection, in a space that historically would have been for something more stringently newsworthy.
That's not all. On this page, even the kickers are suspect. If we compare the headline of the "Under Bush" with it's kicker, we see two fairly polarized points of view: The high hopes of an industry counting on a sympathetic administration, and those of insiders, who believe the Republican White House will erase restrictions imposed by Clinton.
The kicker appears to simply be restate, or summarize, a function that, traditionally, kickers are for. This is exemplified by "Bowling chic"'s kicker, "Fashion items range from Purses to shoes an shirts." But closer look at the text shows opinionated language: "foresees," "easing," and "regulation," and "erase," "restrictions," and "imposed." This is hardly an impartial summary and proof of the cooption of a traditional function to enhance entertainment value.
The particulars of font choice also reveal entertainment value and youth appeal; choosing both a more readable font, and a larger size literally steer your eyes toward certain information. The "Downtown" headline is in the Post's traditional headline typeface: bold san serif. This would make it important, except san serifs, as a matter of design, are harder to read than serif fonts (this is why most text heavy books use serif fonts.) Headlines for "Bear markets," "Bowling chic," and "Under Bush" are all in serif fonts. Now, guess which article's headline is in the largest type? "Bowling chic."
Let's get back to images. Use of color, images, and photographs can and will draw attention to a print-media presentation. This is partially because of technology, partially because of the success of USA Today, and mostly because we are visual-oriented beings.
If we continue using western reading style as our guide, image use actually begins before any text. At the top of the page, in American-universal colors red/green, read "good/bad," are market summaries. Except for the columnist's picture, every image is a full color photograph; even the miniature Business Plus insert in the teasers at the bottom. So, the page is visually compelling before you read a single word. This is certainly not the concern of a facts and figures-type traditional businessperson, as evidenced by the Wall Street Journal's resistance to change.
Another interesting statistic is the amount of space taken up by each layout segment on the page (minus headlines, and excluding each teaser as negligible). Assume the printable area (allowing a 1/2 inch bleed around whole page) to be 12" x 22" or 264". Here is the percentage of space breakdown for everything that is the not column (17%) or a headline: "Downtown" (5.3%), "Under Bush" (8.3%), and "Bowling"(12.5%). Graphics were the hands down winner, though, taking 24.6% of the printable area. Apparently, eye-candy on the page is more important than national policy, downtown resurgence, and even bowling shirts.

Audience: Appeals to Younger Audiences


The reason there is a hierarchy to the arrangement of articles on a page and within a section, is because some information is more important than other. Continued examination of this page, coupled with some of the results from the first section of this paper will further reveal the modern newspapers current credo: "Desperate times call for desperate measures."
For decades, newspapers enjoyed the position of being THE source for in-depth news coverage. Newspapers had the space to give extensive background information on events, and ultimately place news in a historical, or sociopolitical context. The best TV and radio could offer was timeliness. During their early days, that wasn't as important for news. Newspapers were put to bed around midnight. If there was breaking news, Extras were printed. But as technology helped the world get smaller, it also made it increasingly difficult and less necessary to get contextual information. So time was always of the essence, but now, timeliness was paramount. Newspapers haven't recovered since.
Newspapers slowly but steadily lost readership. Still, to their discredit, they failed to recognize their situation as a dilemma. After all, they were the news. Foolishly, they did not attempt to shore up their information monopoly. Nor did they encourage non-traditional readership. So, today, they scramble for it.
Back on page 1 of our section E, this is played out within the text of the news story itself. Young, inexperienced reporters are encouraged to write with loose language, and to feature/trivialized even the most important news. The framing of the "Bowling" article evidences this: entertainment value is consistently more important than newsworthiness.
But the images themselves also play a part. Not only is the picture accompanying the "Bowling" article huge, but, it also quite conveniently has the name of the fictional lane that is the main location of a very popular twenty-something's' sitcom, "Ed." A younger reader, who may overlook the headline in its super, reader-friendly font, could hardly miss the Stuckey Bowl in the foreground, dead center of the page.
Perhaps more importantly, this, and the other large photograph contain several latent messages. Chief among them is the message, "Hey! We're a hip paper!" They managed to include not only references to a "twenty-something" person's pop culture, but also to twenty-something people themselves. The description of the top photograph says, what the people in the picture, "prospective model, Mika Ishida, 20", already suggests. The "Downtown" article doesn't just discuss the growth in downtown business and employees; with this accompanying photograph, it suggests the increases are comprised exclusively of the young, and hip-by way of Mika Ishida and her photographer (NOTE*: considering the recent push to draw young people back into St. Louis, especially St. Louis city-which is conveniently summarized to mean drawing them downtown, not into north and south city-this should come as no surprise.)
Being hip is also in what you say, and the Post says it well: "Bowling chic is in vogue - and businesses strike it rich." This headline (which I am consistently picking on because of its prominent placement on the page) contains two synonyms for hip, 'chic' and 'in vogue' while also having two perennial winners in the "favorite pastimes of young people" category: 'bowling' and 'striking it rich.' Even with 'striking' contextually swinging between bowling imagery and slang for 'making quick money' you can't miss this point (nor can you miss the shameless amount of bowling references within the article.) These messages would be lost on the business sections traditional audience-except, ironically, when they are trying to sell to or be, well...hip.
A final strategy for competing with the lure of quick information is to use the kicker as a bookend-type summarization against the headline. This way, if you read the headline and kicker, snuggled near a healthy-sized picture, you don't have to read further. Watch what happens when I run the title into the kicker: "Downtown St. Louis shows net growth in commerce. Survey reveals gain of 67 businesses and 2,902 employees." And: "Bowling chic is in vogue - businesses strike it rich. (These) Fashion items range from purses to shoes and shirts."
Ultimately, such concessions weaken the integrity of the newspaper medium. Newspapers do not have to compromise their information to survive; however, they do have to reinvent their approach. There are ways to secure their position as an important mediums that do not include the "beat'm or join'm" approach. These ideas range from marketing options to school programs to technological advances-present and future-that that could help them reestablish the foothold that will otherwise slip away.
Realizing this possibility would take foresight, and patience, and an awakening to their currently tenuous state of existence. And, despite being one of its biggest fans, I am not at all confident the Grand Ol' Medium is quite ready for such an honest self-assessment.

Darren Owens March 27, 2001
Media Literacy Prof. Silverblatt