One story is all we have time for

The front page of a broad-sheet daily newspaper has traditionally been treated as a window to what's happening in the readers' world, a collection of the most interesting and most important news of the day.

That seems to have changed.

Today (Sunday, Nov. 18, 2008) the Chicago Tribune, supposedly one of the leading metropolitan daily newspapers in the country, ran a one-story front page about the dangers some cribs pose to babies. It's a story that's part of an on-going interest of the Tribune. In other words, not anything new to regular readers.

In the past, it has been a point of emphasis for the folks who deliver the paper to make sure the front page is displayed through the plastic bag for subscribers to see when they pick up the paper off their front porches. Not today. The front page was so insignificant that it was hidden behind another section.

There was a time when printers, the folks who worked outside the newsroom and served a role between the editorial department and the press room, would put together the front page. Their rule of thumb was to make sure, when the page was completed, that a person could toss a quarter onto the front page and no matter where it landed, the quarter would touch a headline.

Now the visual school of thought has taken over newsrooms, claiming it's not a headline or subject that attracts readers but how the information plays visually on the page.

Meanwhile, the Tribune continues to lose readers and advertisers at an alarming rate and its financial losses of the last quarter indicate the need for even more layoffs, probably many more of which will come from the editorial staff.

Maybe whoever thought the new Tribune was a good idea will be the one who gets to turn out the lights.

Change really comes closer to home

A lot of very happy folks woke up this morning already looking forward to the new world order they hope will be created with the election of Barack Obama as president. Having grown up in the deep South during a time when blacks and whites drank at different public water fountains and sat in separate waiting rooms, it is remarkable indeed to think this could happen in my lifetime.

A lot of people were voting for the first time in yesterday's election. A couple of the people in line ahead of me didn't know which precinct they lived in and were a little distressed when their name wasn't in the big book. For most, they just needed to walk to the other side of the room where a different precinct voted to find their name and cast their ballot.

With so much excitement, I'm left hoping they are not eventually disappointed.

The president has nothing to do with the fact that we pay the highest sales tax in the United States. He has nothing to do with the county's policy to review real estate assessments every three years and raise property taxes as much as 7 percent a year. He has nothing to do with a dangerous intersection that needs a traffic light, the gang members who huddle at the street corner as you get off public transportation and walk home from work, or the fact that less than half the freshman class at your neighborhood high school will graduate.

Presidential elections get so much of our attention they can't help but motivate us to vote.

If only there were a way to get people as motivated to participate in elections that really matter. It's a whole lot more important to people who their mayor is, their city councilman, their county board representative, their state representative or even their state senator. It matters more how the city clerk runs his office, or whether the clerk of courts is honest and conscientious.

But those jobs are less sexy, don't get the day-to-day attention and sometimes their election days are in the winter during lousy weather. People want their voices heard in a national election that swings on differences of hundreds of thousands or millions of votes, but don't feel the same way about a local election whose result could hinge on a couple of dozen votes.

And sometimes be decided by a single vote.

There's little doubt this nation feels better about itself today than it has in eight years, and there's no reason to believe things won't be better for this country four years from now than they are today.

But ask yourself: Can you say the same thing about your neighborhood?

Thanks Joe

As Purdue gets ready to take on a 2-6 Michigan football team Saturday, let's take a minute to thank Boilermakers' coach Joe Tiller for being such a great role model.

As the father of small children, parents like me try to teach their kids to leave things as they found them -- visit someone's house and play with their toys, make sure you put the toys where they were when you started.

Well, Tiller took over a lousy football program at Purdue and he's leaving a lousy one behind. In the middle, he coached Purdue to 10 bowl games in 12 years, including a Rose Bowl. Thanks for that. But what happened the last five years or so?

Purdue hasn't beaten a Top 25 teams in years. It hasn't won a game in November -- other than to beat Indiana -- in years. It's late season collapses now, however, are all lost in the early season collapse of this team.

To Tiller's credit, he brought the spread offense to the Big Ten that now is the standard offense in college football. But before his death, Randy Walker had done more with that same offense at Northwestern than Tiller and Purdue. While other coaches were helping the offense evolve, Purdue simply became predictable.

The saddest case in point is the performance of Curtis Painter this year. The senior quarterback, who the university's sports information office was pushing for a Heisman Trophy, has more interceptions than touchdown passes through eight games. Even the offense stuck in the mud during the Jim Colletto and Fred Akers eras were more interesting and more productive than this.

Tiller will leave as Purdue's most successful coach, but the disappointment is that things could have been so much better than they turned out. Whether it was a lack of imagination or a lack of energy, this program ran out of gas a long time ago.

No matter what Tiller has accomplished, he'll leave Purdue football just where he found it: losing and directionless.

Tribune should put the readers it has first

The argument that the Chicago Tribune has been alienating, rather than attracting, readers since its change of ownership was supported with strong evidence Monday.

It was hardly surprising to learn when the nation's newspaper circulation numbers were released that the Tribune had suffered some significant losses. According to a story in Crain's Chicago Business online edition, which cited figures released by Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Tribune lost 7.75 percent of its circulation over a six-month period that closed in September. The national average was 4.6 percent.

The Tribune also lost 5.8 percent of its Sunday subscribers against a national average of 4.8 percent.

Since Johannes Gutenberg, newspapers have been trying to figure out how to grow circulation. Those efforts, in recent years, have centered more on trying to modernize the look of the everyday product even as editorial staffs have shrunk, news hole has shrunk, and even the dimensions of the newsprint have shrunk. Though the Tribune would have everyone believe otherwise, they did not invent the idea of jazzing up the product to attract young or new customers.

And the early returns would indicate that not only is it not working, this redesign is also managing to alienate many of the paper's long-time readers.

One of the great fears of business people is losing customers without knowing why. Ask yourself why you stopped going to a particular retailer after a bad experience or some other disappointment. Unless you stopped to tell the owner or manager about your concerns, they have no idea why you never came back.

The Tribune, on the other hand, has the benefit of an avalanche of feedback on its recent changes. The redesign has been discussed not only on local radio, but also online following nearly every news story about the paper on numerous sites. While there have been some compliments, the complaints are running about 20-1 ahead.

More to the point, the compliments that have been registered are coming from people who currently subscribe. There's been little evidence of anyone saying, "I love the new look. I think I'll start subscribing."

It's also troubling to hear that subscribers are sharing their thoughts directly with the publisher and editors through letters, e-mails and voice mails with little or no response from these executives. There's no more effective way to say "I don't care about you" than to ignore you.

It's not the look, really, that's at issue. It's what the look represents, a change that dismisses current readers.

The new generation of Tribune executives would be advised to learn what the writers and line editors in the newspaper learned a long time ago: It's not the look that attracts or alienates readers, it's the content. Readers know when things are being taken away. They know when a favorite feature is missing. They know when a meeting isn't covered. They also read the news from other sources that tell them when the staff or expenses are being trimmed. Modern trends indicate that consumers want better and more. Price is less a consideration than quality and quantity.

Newspaper are still the best source for depth and breadth on the wide variety of issues that people face in their everyday lives. Communities fortunate enough to support newspapers benefit from the scrutiny of a motivated watchdog, even if it doesn't necessarily show in every edition.

Where we all lose is when the people who are supposed to be working in the paper's best interest fall into the trap of placing style at a higher priority than substance. Certainly no newspaper would tolerate an elected official doing the same. In newspapering, the bottom line should be less about the numbers that follow the dollar sign and more about the community -- and readers -- it serves.