I assume all of you can read this size type.
But a total of 26 of you called or sent e-mail this week to express your frustration with the new body type size revealed in the redesign of The Salt Lake Tribune.
“I can’t read this type in the stories. It’s too small,” one reader complained.
Another called and said, “My husband is legally blind and cannot read the stories in the paper.”
Several e-mails asked if The Tribune was trying to get rid of older readers. “I have been a subscriber for 45 years and I’m going to cancel if you do not change this. I cannot read it.”
I understand. I use +3 strength reading glasses myself as my arms became too short to read small print years ago.
While the new look of The Trib is a great combination of classical newspaper elements and modern design that aims at inviting the reader into every story and photograph, the type size for the text of stories would benefit from a slight increase in size. Stay tuned to see if Editor James E. Shelledy looks through his reading glasses long enough to perceive a future when he might have difficulty reading the stories after he scans the headlines.
Spinning the War: Readers who support the war, readers who support the troops and readers who oppose the war have called and sent e-mail this week concerning The Tribune’s coverage of rallies for and against the battle in Iraq. And people on all sides believe this newspaper is ignoring their marches, protests, speeches and other communications.
Oh, stop it. Tribune staff members are covering what they find out about. If editors threw every reporter out of the newsroom and told them to go find every expression of war sentiment in the Salt Lake Valley, rest assured, they would miss some. If you are concerned about your group getting coverage, then take the time to call the newsroom (801-257-8782) or send a fax (801-257-8525) or send an e-mail (newsroom@sltrib.com) and let staff know the following information on your event: who, what, where, when, why and how. Also include your name and a telephone number where you can be reached.
The Salt Lake Tribune is not in the psychic news business. If you feel strongly about your protest or support, then let the staff know about it. Some of it will be covered and some won’t.
Covering the Gore: Reader advocates and ombudsmen from newspapers across the world have been chatting in cyberspace this week about using photographs of prisoners of war and dead soldiers and civilians in their newspapers.
It looks as though American editors are a bit more circumspect about using them than are Europeans. A number of newspapers made their own independent decisions about using the initial unidentified face shots of the first five American POWs.
Modern technology has brought us to this point in war coverage. In the past, it took much longer for pictures of POWs to make it out of a country at war and onto TV screens and into newspapers. No more.
In today’s theater of war, television channels can download satellite feeds from state-run television stations and then beam them around the world. From the TV pictures, photographers can make screen captures and turn them into still shots. This means the faces get out before the names and hometowns do. And in some instances, before the military has a chance to notify families at home.
And that last fact is the one that caused such pause in this country about those pictures. Newspapers that used the photos without names (as did The Tribune) and those who did not were about equal in numbers.
Of equal controversy among editors were photos taken from Iraqi TV that showed dead American troops with holes through their heads where they apparently had been shot by enemy troops. Many newspapers used shots that showed the bodies, but did not show the faces of the dead. The Tribune did not use a photo of the bodies. Most TV channels and newspapers in the Arab world and in Europe used the shots that showed the faces of the dead soldiers.
The rationale of those TV stations and newspapers was that war is a terrible event and to ignore its horrors would be to cheat on coverage, according to the e-mail chain from reader advocates. Some American newspaper editors were haunted by the reaction to shots of a dead American solider being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by Somalians when the U.S. tried to defeat violent war lords there in the 1990s. In most cases, American newspaper readers react angrily to those kinds of violent shots. So, in many cases, Americans — who should be looking to as many news sources as possible to fit together all the pieces of the war puzzle — will look at less violent photos than will European and Arab readers.
