IN GENERAL, there are two groups of people: There are those who usually read the newspaper and there are those who usually do not. A newspaper cannot do much about this state of affairs.
But a newspaper can do two things: publish an informative product that satisfies its usual readers, and publish an attractive, eye-catching product that may grab the attention of non-readers and convert them into loyal customers.
The latter task is extremely difficult. Some people never read a newspaper. Others read only when something extraordinary has occurred. A newspaper should not give up on these people. However, it should strive to make its product as distinctive as possible.
The most obvious way to do this is with an interesting front page, specifically the top half of the page. The top half is known as "above the fold," because it is, coincidentally, the portion of the newspaper located above the fold. Journalists can be quite clever.
Putting interesting things above the fold is important because that is the part of the newspaper most people see as they pass by a newsstand, a newspaper box or a stack of newspapers. If it looks good, someone who may not normally read it may pick it up. If it looks boring, that person may keep walking.
The Cavalier Daily finished the past week with three above-the-fold looks that can charitably be described as dull. The lead pictures in each issue were a man at a podium (Wednesday), two people and a desk (Thursday), and nine men smiling for the camera (Friday). Not exactly scintillating stuff.
But what can The Cavalier Daily do? The stories on the front page generally are about events that cannot be described by cute graphics or action photos. Sometimes, the page has to look boring - right?
Sometimes, maybe, but not often. There are two basic ways around the problem.
The first is to run a photograph by itself. The Cavalier Daily did this on Tuesday with a large photo illustrating the effects of Monday's strong winds. But random pictures of things around Grounds can get old. Another possibility is to cover an event with simply a picture and caption if the event is something that may not merit a full story and the photo has potential to be interesting.
The second way is to run a photograph that promotes a story that is not on the front page. I am sure that many of the sports and life stories, for example, have photographs taken for the stories that never appear in the newspaper. Some of those photos could serve the dual purpose of being more interesting than the photos described above and of drawing readers into other sections of the newspaper. Again, The Cavalier Daily showed it can do this in Monday's paper with a front-page picture from the Super Bowl.
But it could always do more - information boxes, graphs, more frequent uses of the two types of photos described above, etc. Like most aspects of journalism, experience helps. Getting someone to look at a page full of what may be tedious stories can require some tricks, and accumulating a bag of tricks takes time for any page designer.
The content of stories brings me back to the first thing a newspaper can do: publish an informative product to satisfy its readers. Many readers were dissatisfied this week after seeing Tuesday's sports section, and this time they were upset about something that was not in the paper.
Three big-time football recruits verbally committed to Virginia on Monday, but The Cavalier Daily had nothing about it in Tuesday's newspaper. I exchanged e-mails with the sports editors, and the short version of the explanation is that they decided to wait to run a story until the official signing day occurred Wednesday because verbal commitments normally are not covered by The Cavalier Daily and because verbal commitments can be broken. Anyone who knows about Ronald Curry understands that last point.
This is where judgment comes into play. Monday's commitments were reported on local newscasts and on major sports Web sites. When that is the case, an editor needs to consider how more experienced news outlets are handling a story and maybe go against his or her own judgment. As for Curry, he verbally committed months before the official signing day; commitments made two days before signing day presumably are a little more solid.
The editors did not make the choice to ignore the verbal commitments capriciously, but the choice may have been erroneous. To their credit, the editors put together a nice package on the signees in Thursday's edition and made a good move by placing it at the top of the page, above coverage of a men's basketball game.
Overall, last week was an example of some good, some not so good. With staff turnover a recent occurrence, the learning curve still is steep, and mixed results are to be expected.
(Matthew Branson can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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