No gamer on front page?

I am reminded of a scene in the Kevin Smith film "Chasing Amy." Ben Affleck's character falls in love with a lesbian and his friend says something like, why can't you take the path of less resistance and fall for a woman who likes men? Why don't we gear our products to people who like newspapers? I can't think of another product that tries to appeal to its least likely customers.

 

Thank you, Frank.

I'm all for trying new things. But in the end, let's draw the line with doing the basic things our readers expect.

 

It's an evolution.

15 years ago, on Sundays our NFL team had to share Page 1 with U.S. Open tennis or baseball playoffs.

Not anymore. We have an NFL section and a "Sports" section. Some papers wrap their NFL section around the sports section.

If your NFL section happens to be a wraparound, are readers "offended" because the U.S. Open or the World Series is on Page 5 (the beginning of the regular sports section)?

I would hope not.

I would also hope they wouldn't be offended if the gamer gets a 72-point head at the top of page 3 (as opposed to a 30-point deck at the bottom of page 1).

 

I've often thought about the "Chasing Amy" analogy Frank. It really fits.

The issue isn't whether we do wraparounds or put it all in one section.

The issue is our relentless quest for the unattainable reader. We need to quit dumbing down content in the name of luring in people who don't like to read. It makes about as much sense as tattoo parlors gearing their marketing toward geriatrics.

I'm not just pointing fingers at the designers.

The writers need to write better. They need to tell better stories.

But they also need an environment that makes it possible. They need not to hear that a story isn't worth 30 inches -- because nobody has the attention span to read that long, even though DaVinci code sold 70 gazillion copies -- BEFORE THE EDITOR EVEN READS IT. (No, I'm not talking about deadline copy. If the writer knows he has a 20-inch hole at night, he needs to hit the mark.)

 

frank - you're right, i shouldn't have used one example, but it was the most recent of many. instead, i should have said my paper rarely gets responses to gamers and our readers are indeed more interested columns as far as our everyday reader response and surveys are concerned.

as far as insulting readers, i disagree with you whole heartedly. i hate reading game stories and never make it through an entire gamer unless someone's paying me regardless of how well written it is. a column or sidebar on the other hand pulls me in ... if i'm say, on vacation and have no input in what goes into the section i'm reading.

for me, there is nothing wrong with NOT striving to be a paper of record. instead, i'd rather inform and entertain readers at the same time. and i think that better fits what people are asking for in the 21st century.

that's just my opinion, i could be wrong.

 

frank said "Why don't we gear our products to people who like newspapers?"

because they're all dying frank and they weren't being replaced with former trends.

 

The ads . . . Ben Affleck . . . Chasing Amy . . . Kevin Smith . . . and . . . Jennifer Lopez??????

Just recording it for prosperity. Go back to your meaningful discussion now.

 

If you don't like the game stories in your paper, Tom, then you need to figure out a way to get them to do a better job writing them.

Gamers don't HAVE to suck.

If they do suck, it's on the writer for not telling the story well. And it's on the editors for not creating an environment -- giving too many stories to write, too many blogging duties, etc., -- to tell the story.

We may be jaded about the games. But as shot has often pointed out, they're damn important to the fans. We need to do them justice.

 

I call bullshit on that one. Have you even read one reader survey? I've read a bunch, and I've yet to see one ask this question.

There is certainly no evidence that our attempts to reinvent newspapers, which have been ongoing since at least the 1970s, have helped because circ is still falling. What I'm saying is that we took good, useful products and screwed them up. I think these "solutions" have caused much more harm than good and are a large factor in making us less relevant. The further we get from news, the less reason there is to buy us.

 

monte - i don't want to lose sight of why i posted on this topic to begin with ... a column ran on the front page instead of the gamer and i wasn't offended. i'd simply rather read the column than the gamer and believe readers feel the same.

the people at my paper do a fine job writing gamers, but the bottom line, it's still a gamer. shit, (most) anybody at any level can write a gamer that doesn't doesn't lede with "it was a hot and muggy night ..."

 

well frank, i call bullshit to your calling bullshit. the question in question is: "what do you want to see more of in the drippydick press?"

about your second point frank, i can do nothing more than agree to disagree with you. of course there always is a want and a need for hard news, but not all news has to be presented hard. people in journalism have long been accused of taking themselves too seriously ... there can only be so many war coorespondants.

 

It amazes me how short-sighted some people are in here. Seems as if any bold idea or new way of doing something gets criticized. Paul Galvin, co-founder of Motorola, had it right: Any change is good change, because it means there's movement -- sometimes in the right direction, sometimes in the wrong direction. But without movement, there's stagnation. And with stagnation, there's irrelevance.