It’s one of those things that occurs in the newspaper business from time to time and makes readers cringe.
Unfortunately, it makes editors want to slit their wrists.
The Friday (3/23) print edition of the Kansas City Star featured a major headline on the front page announcing “Charges Coming Today” about pending charges against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales in the killing of Afghan civilians.
Unfortunately, the headline is over a picture of an Army soldier returning home and hugging his daughter. The smaller headline under the photo says “A Warm Welcome Home.”
The Kansas City Star’s Readers’ Representative Derek Donovan tried to explain what happened to a reader who called to complain.
“This is a textbook example of what’s referred to as a non-modular design,” he wrote on the Star Web site. “Pages with a modular design are made up of rectangles — outlined or not — that keep all elements of a story within four distinct sides.
“Some designers like the freedom of non-modular pages, but I think my caller today points out the unintended associations they can sometimes cause.”
KC STAR HEADLINE CONFUSES HERO & KILLER
2 Responses
Leave a Reply
Featured Clients
Editorial Juxtapositioning. But in the case of the right-leaning Drudge Report, I couldn’t help but notice a link to a story ‘CNN reporter says “nigg*r” on the air’ right above a large picture of President Obama on another story.
Drudge likely caught some complaints about it; I notice it was moved to another column this morning. But story placement is of the ways I’ve noticed Drudge exercises his editorial maljudgment against Democrats in general and the President in particular.
Non-modular design became popular in the mid-’90s. It was supposedly a way of getting more stories “above the fold” on section fronts. Which would matter only if people were buying the papers out of racks, on the street …
Today, when people are clearly not buying newspapers out of racks in the streets, and the papers are barely clinging on to subscribers, why use non-modular design?
Because it’s easy. If you’re lazy, you can put a ginormous eye-catching headline atop the best photo of the day and not worry about whether they’re even remotely related.
The only thing different about this particular Star front page from any other day’s offering is that this unrelated headline and photograph were … well … RELATED. And somebody should have recognized that.