In the Zen of creating daily journalism, this is my mantra: Newspaper readers are creatures of habit.
Editors and reporters who forget this basic tenet risk alienating their subscribers.
It would be one thing if the habits of subscribers were confined to the times they read the paper, the sections they start with or the place in their homes they plop down with their paper.
That is simply the beginning.
They have expectations and habits with each section of the paper they read.
They have special expectations for the TV Week section that comes in the Sunday paper.
And many of those expectations have not been fulfilled in the latest incarnation of TV Week — published by the Newspaper Agency Corp. and inserted in The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News.
First the bad news: Since NAC started printing the weekly section in house, it has been poorly folded and often wrinkly, according to some of our readers. Several people were so distraught they spent $1.29 in postage to mail their copies to me.
The problem of getting the insert folded properly on the old presses at the downtown location is one NAC is puzzling over. (I know that sounded as hollow as the statement that President Bush is working on finding Osama Bin Laden.) And, believe me, I have compassion for those of you who are out there on Sunday attempting to refold your copy so you can make sense of it during the week.
Why did this happen? Because the NAC wanted to use the TV guide as a “wrapper” for stuffing advertising sections in the Sunday paper. That little extra paper on the front of the publication helps machines find the center, kind of like those premade taco shells you can buy that have one side higher than the other, so it’s easier to stuff in the meat and lettuce and cheese at home. This problem may take a while to solve, but they have made an adjustment so that although there is an overlap of the first half of the booklet over the second half, it now appears as though the TV grids are spaced evenly on either side of the fold.
Here’s the good news: NAC personnel heard your bellows about leaving certain features out of the TV Week product. In a frenzy of self-absorption, the TV Week staff apparently decided no one in Utah watches TV after 11:30 p.m., so they simply dropped the late-night listings. Bad move. I got calls. And, apparently, they got calls. A voice mail on the NAC TV Week complaint number, 801-237-2365, noted on Friday that the staff is working on getting the late-night listings and the Animal Planet listings back in the booklet. “Other improvements are on the way,” the voice mail concludes.
One would hope so.
Now, if we could just get the staff to stop putting such a dark gray screen over the movie listings in the TV grid, we could improve readability about 200 percent.
Intelligence Test? One subscriber, irritated by what he considered Tribune flubs, sent in a package of them this week with little
comments on each clip. The one that made me roar — and appreciate how sharp this reader is — was from the April 1 edition of The Tribune. The feature section from that day had a cover article on a designer of artsy handbags, little fun purses with plenty of color and bits of beading. Two photos ran with the story package. The reader wrote,
“Notice anything about these two pictures? Like . . . they are the same bags just rearranged. How stupid do you think your readers are?”
Never leave me an opening like that, please. I am only human.
Most of us do not think readers are stupid, but it sometimes looks like we do.
The flub was exacerbated by the information printed with the two photos of identical purses. The photo caption said, “[The bags] have become popular in part because each is unique.”
Certainly, staffers should be more careful about scrutinizing the photos and articles that go in the paper. But it’s good to get a periodic kick in the keister to snap them back to reality.
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The Reader Advocate’s phone number is 801-257-8782. Write to the Reader Advocate, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. E-mail: reader.advocate@sltrib.com.
This week’s stats:
16 Number of readers who claim their copies of The Tribune are “wrinkly.”
111 Number of readers who are upset over the new format of the newspaper’s weekly TV supplement.
14 Number of readers who hate The Tribune’s selection of personal advice columnists.
28 Number of readers who called about the size of type in stories.
