Can design save the newspaper?

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jacek_utko_asks_can_design_save_the_newspaper.html

by makimaki • 17 years ago

38 54 17 years ago

ted.com

tjic• 17 years ago

Can interpretive dance save NASA?

sho• 17 years ago

That was unfairly modded down IMO.

TED is great in its way, but it caters to, some would say flatters, an elite crowd of people - the type who buy expensive artwork for their houses - some of the stuff proposed there might sound great to the chardonnay-class participants but has little relevance in the real world.

Can design save the newspaper? Of course not, and merely raising the question with a straight face impressively demonstrates the out-of-touch, ivory tower, art-gallery-opening-attending disconnect of the speaker.

Such a question is, in my opinion, at least as prima facie ridiculous as posing that interpretive dance might save NASA, so the parent's comment is an entirely valid reductio ad absurdum.

h34t• 17 years ago

In what way is the speaker out-of-touch? He has personally overseen circulation improvements of ~ 30 - 100% in the newspapers he has redesigned.

"Design" in this sense goes far beyond "graphic embellishment" and is actually about changing the entire product/company involved -- and thus very relevant to the future of newspapers.

A few quotes from his speech:

"It was my personal, intimate challenge to talk to the readers."

"the changes we made were not about changing the look, it was about changing the product completely"

"my bosses wondered, why is he asking all these business questions, why is he not showing us pages? This is the new role of the designer, to be in this process from the beginning to end."

Gompers• 17 years ago

From the presentation: "Did design do this? No. Not alone."

Mr. Utko recognizes that design cannot create a 20 to 100 percent increase in circulation. He isn't claiming that it can. He claims that if you "put your work to the highest possible level," you can pull off changes as successful as his.

I agree with your statement about TED, but this does not exemplify the "disconnect" of TED. It's ignorant to claim that his ideas are not relevant in the real world, since they very obviously increased circulation.

The most important slide from the presentation showed a Taijitu (yin and yang) diagram and made the following comparison: function is to form as content is to design.

notaddicted• 17 years ago

The speaker doesn't suggest that design will save the newspaper, he actually says that the series of challenges newspaper printers face would destroy any company. The presentation is about how to do good design, not newspapers.

josefresco• 17 years ago

In an industry that worships smart engineers this is pretty refreshing. I am biased being a designer but it's still a good watch for you Hackers and also a lesson for the newspaper industry (Hint: death is coming).

noodle• 17 years ago

are you talking about the tech industry?

as an engineer/hacker, i think its pretty clear that design is important. its cold, hard facts that people like something that is visually appealing. the issue is, though, that this is a community of hackers, and so we're all mostly poor at artistic design, nor are we particularly interested in it, so we don't talk about it.

its definitely interesting, and this meshes well with the community because its a discussion on the numbers of how design works.

just my $0.02, though

andreyf• 17 years ago

You must be in a different tech industry. At least where I work, a good designer is highly respected by all of the developers - by doing a good job understanding the customer wants, he makes our lives hell of a lot easier.

kaens• 17 years ago

I can't watch the video right now, but I do have a question:

Why would we want to save the newspaper?

0x442• 17 years ago

A major demographic in the United States has a significant nostalgic attachment to newspapers as a vehicle for information and as a driver of the public discourse. Losing that could disenfranchise a group of people who still comprise a large portion of public opinion. More importantly, those views might not survive to be digitized if we don't soften the death spiral facing print media, so we all lose out - even if we don't consume archaic forms of information dissemination.

CalmQuiet• 17 years ago

Shall we similarly have sympathy for the "major demographic" has an attachment to MSIE-6.x... and protect them from needing to upgrade? Or is that an unfair comparison?

run4yourlives5• 17 years ago

While I enjoy my weekend newspaper, and feel that it far surpasses a good deal of the writing available in other mediums, to suggest a dead medium deserves some sort of protection even though it cannot survive on its own is basically counter to everything the free market stands for.

If there is a market for the product, as you suggest their is, then let them pay to enjoy it. If not, so be it.

mynameishere3• 17 years ago

Newspapers still do the bulk of the workaday journalism, which is the raw material of almost all "news" in TV and the internet. CNN will still be able to cover national topics in the future, but local stuff will go uncovered. I predict increased municipal corruption throughout.

derefr• 17 years ago

Newspapers themselves don't do journalism; newspaper journalists do. The journalists who write for newspapers will still exist, and still write what they write, if newspapers die out; their content will just be converted to, and paid for by, a different part of the media.

njharman• 17 years ago

Sure whatever. Newspapers deliver ads, coupons, sales and various other "inserts"(all that crap stuffed into Sunday edition), classifieds, legal notices, wedding/death announcements, etc.

Businesses and people pay(less often than they use to but they still pay) for that delivery. Not enough people pay for journalism, we're too shortsighted and selfish. But we are willing to pay for vanity and to make money. This is why papers aren't going away anytime soon.

pietro• 17 years ago

You would if you owned one. Why _we_ would want to, I have no clue.

mrduncan• 17 years ago

I think the real problem in a lot of cases is that newspapers are trying to be something that they simply can't. They are trying to give you up to the minute news, but logistically you aren't going to receive it until the next day. They simply can't compete with the web for breaking news. Where I think they can win though is with relevant and in-depth reporting on stories which you won't see on the internet (and not just printing half of the AP feed either).

justindz• 17 years ago

Yep. I think they need to come a little late to the table with WAY more substance and to follow scandals a month later with serious indictments. Let the net build the buzz before the big reporting and then spread the news and discussion after the big reporting. A good complement.

Decided to follow up on my blog with a vignette: http://justindz.tumblr.com/post/91601837/this-is-sam-he-work...

markessien• 17 years ago

Imagine the web came before the newspaper, and you were an investor. Then someone came to you and pitched you : I'll take the best stuff on the web, print it daily on paper in factories, transport it all over the country in the night, then sell it for the price of a cup of coffee. I'll also hire a bunch of expensive writers to write quality content, and I'll also make that content available for free on the website so as to make people want to buy the paper.

Would you invest?

antiismist• 17 years ago

If you watched the video then you'd know that the designer did a great job of integrating the content into the design of the newspaper. It isn't a copy-paste job. There was design and layout and graphics that you just can't do on the web, and he demonstrated that people like it.

So if you change the question to, would you invest in a designer who had a track record of boosting circulation by 20-100% in two years time?

run4yourlives5• 17 years ago

Not if, even with the boost, you're still not breaking even.

blhack• 17 years ago

Did he call it a magazine?

mhb• 17 years ago

Donation-funded reporting: http://spot.us/

_b8r0• 17 years ago

No.

TweedHeads• 17 years ago

Newspapers must drop the 'paper' from their name and embrace the web. Profit can come from diferent ways, like ads, classifieds, job boards, obituaries, etc.

petercooper• 17 years ago

Fancy checking out a PDF conversion of the newspaper that was featured in this video..? I found a copy at http://rapidshare.com/files/142517365/pb.04.09.08.pdf - I'd mirror it, but even though I'm sure they'd love for people to check out their newspaper, it's just too risky legally.

misuba3• 17 years ago

It's been a few weeks now since the Seattle P-I went web only. Anyone else notice how there were lots of news stories about that change, and now nothing?

Reporters aren't even interested. They just believe that going to the web equals death.

halo• 17 years ago

No. British broadsheet The Guardian had a high-profile redesign in 2005 which shifted the newspaper away from the traditional broadsheet into a full-colour Berliner, and soon after the paper won multiple design awards and their circulation has increased while the rest of the industry has contracted. However, the devil is in the details: the newspaper has continued to make large operating losses (£26.4m this year compared to £15.9m last) and continues to be propped up by other businesses in the group.

Can design save the newspaper?

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