It’s a challenge and an exercise, posed by Good, a new magazine “for people who give a damn.” You’ll find it in the March/April “Media Issue” on the back page. Couldn’t resist, of course. Since I give a damn, I gave it my best, putting together all sorts of my ideas on a single page. Especially, the one about teasing stories … Make people buy it, open it and read! (Sure it’s tacky, but so are people who’ll read that Page One story and not fork over 50 cents.) Since you probably can’t read the thumbnail image posted here, click here to see a full-blown .pdf of my “New Paper” front page.
Drama & Suspense
Drama Lessons Taken From TV
Steve Lovelady, an ex-Inquirer editor, once made the memorable remark that newspaper’s biggest threat wasn’t TV news, but TV dramas like L.A. Law. The ability of TV to captivate is a big reason Americans have less time to read. So meet the challenge by embracing dramatic storytelling. Instead of inching multiple crime stories along day by day, adding this ID and that blind investigative alley, patiently flesh out the full story until it can recreated in full, suspenseful narrative fashion. Make it a must-read, like must-see TV. And schedule such stories regularly. Perhaps even do reruns. (Book collections of such cases?) Document the day-to-day details online, to stay competitive with radio and TV, but reserve the dramatic epic exclusively for print.