The oversold story

Tell me if you’ve been here before.

You’re sitting in the Page One meeting and hearing about a photo/story package the paper has been working on all day. You have lots of great pictures and the story line is compelling.

There is sure to be interest in this story. There’s a disease sweeping through the community or a rash of arsons in town or something that promises to have plenty of information and color - and what the town’s doing about it with context and analysis. The plan is to make a dominant, centerpiece package out of it on the front page.

Does this sound familiar yet?

Cut to later in the evening. You’re still waiting for the story, but the design is ready. And then the story arrives.

You read it. It starts fine. It lays out the problem. But where is the plan of action you were promised? What are the possible solutions? What should be done about it? In short, it’s half of what you were promised.

Looking at the page at this point in time it dawns on you that the entire approach to the page is wrong, because you were misled. The entire staff of editors and designers were misled. The reporter didn’t come through with the big story. What got submitted is half of what the news desk expected them to get.

And at this hour in the evening, they sent it on to you. No warning. No discussion about how to revise the entire plan. Let’s just run it now and at some future date let’s get the rest of the story. And let’s not worry that it looks so good but doesn’t deliver on its promise.

Now it sounds familiar.

So what are you going to do about it? More often than not, the designers I work with, and myself included, just swallow it and proceed with a great looking page and a mediocre story. At least the heat won’t fall on you later - the problem wasn’t your design. You were told it was a great story. Hell, you could argue you didn’t have time to read it completely and assumed the story was as promised. After all, it came in at 10 p.m.

But on reflection, I’m going to advocate opening your big mouth and arguing for reworking the page or holding the story for a better version. Are you going to be popular? Hell no. Not tonight.

But do we have the space, credibility and our readers’ time to waste on half-finished stories?

No, we do not.

Should we be glorifying mediocre stories? The answer is no.

Now pick your poison.