Today's NYTimes sports front

Didn't read the story, but I'm guessing there are no photos because the guy in question can't remember pivotal moments so that's what the blank spaces represent?
If that's the idea of the story, wouldn't it have been better to run the story full with empty spots breaking up the text?

 

The Times loves, loves, loves them some stories that make you feel guilty about watching football in any context. They've basically decided that an incredibly nuanced and complicated topic can be boiled down to a much simpler narrative: Football is killing our children (some of whom grow up to be dementia-suffering old men before they are killed) and your continued support of it is a moral failing.

If you want to counter with, "Well, it's an appropriate counterweight to the shameless head-in-the-sand boosterism that appears elsewhere" so be it. But I'm finding many of these stories to be a bit one-note, frankly.

 

Really, it boiled down to sports editor Jason Stallman's experience with it. He read it as a Word document and thought the words by themselves were powerful, and he wanted to replicate that experience for readers, hence this treatment.

The inner workings of that New York Times SportsMonday cover – The Society for News Design – SND

 

Why didn't he want to "replicate that experience" for web readers? Why only print readers?

Over-the-top explanations and knowledge that the page went through 10 prototypes before publication does not change stupid.

 

There are thousands of interesting newspaper and magazine pieces written every year. What made this one so special that it just had to appear as a block of text on the sports front of the New York Times? This is a paper that has reporters stationed in every war zone on the globe. And this football story - nothing against the subject or his battle - is the one that merits such a treatment? You serious?

When you go with this kind of front, the reader should understand why, at the very least. The blank Hall of Fame page was obvious. The LeBron transaction item was, too. This was just a sports feature. They do dozens of them a year. I still don't get it, and I've been involved in journalism in some form or another for almost a quarter century.

 

I'm telling you man, maybe I'm possessed by the ghost of Boom, but the Times is all about the shame game when it comes to football at the moment. And I love the Times!

 

I wonder if SND just had a convention and the designer was just bursting until he could borrow this technique that he saw.

 

That might be the lamest, most ridiculous explanation I've ever heard.

 

Didn't say it was a good reason for doing it. Just said that was his reasoning.

 

I know. That wasn't aimed at you.

 

This also shows the designer's/design department's fundamental lack of understanding of the issue as well as the Times' coverage of it. The story is fine. It is not groundbreaking or particularly powerful, at least not more than a hundred other stories on the topic, including everything Alan Schwarz wrote for the Times and probably a half-dozen other profiles that have appeared there too.

 

As a designer, I just want to point out that the design was the sports editor's idea. I don't know Stallman's background (I think he was a desk guy but not a designer), but the idea didn't originate with the designer.