Maybe it’s the hour when readers — still wiping sleep from their eyes — reach for their Salt Lake Tribune, but some
of them are not happy with how the Sports or Utah sections move around in placement from day to day.
In a perfect world, these subscribers believe, the Utah section would always be the second section or the Sports section
would always be in the fourth spot, following the world/national news (A section), the Utah section and whatever feature
section was scheduled for that day.
Dream on.
Laying out the newspaper is a complicated task performed every day by personnel at the Newspaper Agency Corp.
(NAC) the company that sells the ads, prints and distributes both The Salt Lake Tribune and The Deseret News.
Basically, the NAC layout department starts every day with a clean slate, but some minimum space requirements. For
instance, the sports section seeks a minimum of 30 columns — or the equivalent of 5 full pages every day — in which to
stuff stories, photos, stats and other essentials about professional, college and high schools sports, plus occasional
features.
When the advertisement orders for each day come into layout, the real fun begins, according to Mike Harnois, makeup
supervisor for NAC. Some retail advertisers want to run in Sports or the A section or Utah and it’s Harnois’ job to make
that happen.
He and his staff balance the newsroom’s demands for space with advertisers’ requests for position in a certain section;
then they mix in the number of color ads for the paper (which have to be positioned to suit the printing press), the most
economical way to print the paper (using the least amount of newsprint) and the best way to accommodate frequent
requests from editors for inside color or inside full pages for news or feature coverage.
Now, sorting out all those conflicting requests is no easy task. Simply, Harnois is tapdancing as fast as he can.
“The classified section varies — it has imponderable variables,” Harnois said, so it gets put in different sections, as do
the paid obituaries. “The Sunday classified is always in the early run (printed on Saturday along with the Opinion section,
and regular Sunday feature sections), and the Saturday classified is generally in the back of the paper, because it’s so big.”
Whew.
In what might come as a shock to some readers, laying out the paper is “advertiser-driven,” Harnois said. “I have to fit
the news hole (space for stories, photos, etc.) in where it can fit.”
But his staff is “not trying to frustrate the reader.” The dollars that come from advertising are an important part of a
newspaper’s revenue stream, so the juggling act the layout department does day after day is an astounding one.
No Joke: A number of readers called and sent e-mail this week about the front-page story on Thursday by Skip Knowles
detailing a serious problem with teens chasing and killing wildlife in their 4-wheelers. In the otherwise horrifying story,
Knowles tossed off a line that was apparently meant to be a lawyer joke.
Among others, James Edward McDaniel, Esq., took exception:
“I want an apology from Skip Knowles for the very crass, unprofessional, and unjournalistic (sic) remark regarding
attorneys in his article about the killing of deer. He’s not Dave Barry, who doesn’t confuse humor with news. Mr.
Knowles isn’t funny and is uninformed. If I see him on the front page again, with or without another bon mot, I’ll cancel
my subscription to The Tribune. I can live without the local paper if all it aspires to be is the local rag.”
It is editors who allowed the line to get through. Editor James E. Shelledy said the line was out of place in this story.
“When a story deals with a serious subject, avoid being funny or cute. . . . [The line] about deer not being mistaken for
lawyers is a great line for a light-hearted piece about deer or attorneys, but doesn’t fit in an appalling story about
adolescent drivers deliberately trying to ram their cars into animals. Play serious stories straight.” To McDaniel, Shelledy
said, “Knowles is a good reporter and writer whose presence on future front pages is a given. Incidentally, have you heard
the one about how you can tell the difference between a dead lawyer and road kill . . . ”
Scanner Alert: The news department of the Trib is looking for a police-scanner brainiac who can help program the 800
megahertz trunking police channels into the new equipment in the newsroom. Call me if you can help.
