The thing about the Arms Race package — and I use this argument with pretty much any out-of-the-box design — is that if you asked 100 readers of that sports section, "Hey, what do you think of this front-page package story about pitchers?" AT LEAST 95 of them would say, "That's pretty cool. It's neat how you did that with the photos and the text." (and if they didn't say that, it'd be something close to it).
See, what we forget about our readers is that they'll read whatever we give them, however it looks, diagonal text across the page or enormous photos with stat boxes and pull quotes and did-you-know factoids and all the other bells and whistles known to man. The only ones who act overly critical of design are us, the journos.
It's funny how we cut each other down to size. The Arms Race package is different. As a newspaper reader, it caught my eye, and I know I would've read at least the entire front-page part of the article.
