Asked to describe their newspaper, Sentinel readers might have to reflect a bit.
For 18 years, colorful images of sports or entertainment celebrities greeted readers each morning, promoting other sections of the newspaper from atop the name The Orlando Sentinel on the front page.
Then, last fall, those celebrities chopped off the “The,” stacked Orlando and Sentinel, shoved those words over and jumped down next to the name.
And today, nine months later, the name Orlando Sentinel is back to one line, but the celebrities promoting inside content have disappeared altogether — not just from the front page but from all section fronts.
What’s going on here?
The answer, actually, is more “who” is going on here.
When Tim Franklin became editor of the Sentinel six months ago, he took note of the newspaper’s history of using colorful front-page promotions to entice readers — usually to sports or feature sections. But he favors a more serious look. Franklin believes that careful selection of important and compelling news will attract and hold readers’ attention.
Long having questioned the wisdom of distracting readers with athletes’ and actors’ images, I think he’s on to something.
The folks at the Readership Institute in Evanston, Ill., however, aren’t so sure.
“It makes me a little uneasy,” said Mary Nesbitt, managing director of the institute, part of Northwestern University’s Media Management Center.
The institute recently included promotion in a study to determine what readers want.
Stacy Lynch, who conducted the study, said newspapers that promote their features “had a higher rate of satisfaction, particularly among women and young people.” It helps readers find things they might miss.
Men, however, seem almost oblivious to such promotion.
What about sports? Can we publish a newspaper with no athlete hugging the nameplate?
Apparently.
“The evidence,” Lynch reported, “is that it doesn’t matter at all.”
What does matter, she said, is promotion of features — arts, pop music, television and movies. Promotion, in general, Lynch found, leaves readers more satisfied with coverage of those topics.
The Sentinel will continue to promote features and sections — but at the bottom of the front page. On Sundays, when the newspaper is larger and more complicated to navigate, those literary road signs will rise on the page but not so high that they obscure the news.
Maybe it’s just my demographic group, but I like a newspaper to tell me, without distraction, about the most important and compelling information it has discovered.
Readers, though, probably are wondering, after all this recent change, if the look of the Sentinel will settle down.
Probably not.
Newspapers have become much more dynamic than when a single design would suffice for decades. So, as Central Florida changes, the Sentinel’s appearance likely will, too.
