“Chicago Tribune” Items

When You Are the ONLY Graphics Editor

About a year after starting the Chicago Tribune’s graphics desk, I wrote a very long and detailed memo about what those duties.  The memo was for the lucky [or unlucky] editor who had to fill-in for me during vacation or other absences.  In some ways, it was a mini-handbook about how to create graphics and work with the artists and the news desk at the newspaper.  The memo also include information about to do the promotional banners across the top of the front page; we called them “overlines”.  It wasn’t the best memo I’ve ever written.  In fact, it reads a bit breathless and a bit high-handed.  However, it does have some good advice:

Each graphic must relate to the story it accompanies, either directly from information in the story, or indirectly with information only touched on but not expanded upon. Check first for sense; can this material be best explained in a graph, a map, a chart, a table? Or should it be an insert paragraph? The goal is to make readers understand–not make reporters have an easier writing time or supply “art devices” for makeup.

Perhaps I should have pushed harder at the idea that graphics would make it easier for reporters to do their job.  It might have made the graphics revolution easier.

An Award Dinner That Has Lots of Intersections for the Future

One of the great honors I’ve received is the Bernard Kilgore award from SDX [now known as the Society of Professional Journalists].  I was a student at San Francisco State University and the award came with $2,500 check [ about $15,000 in 2102 dollars].  Robert W. Chandler, who was president of the SDX Foundation, presented the award.  The award ceremony was in Chicago and at the head table I sat next to Clayton Kirkpatrick, editor of the Chicago Tribune.  Here’s what I remember from that night:  Kirkpatrick said that “if you ever want to work in Chicago, let me know.”  Two years later, I did.  But that’s a different story.

Here’s the irony of the that awards ceremony.  Nelson Poynter, board chairman of the St. Petersburg Times, gave the keynote speech.  This is years before he founded the Modern Media Institute, which later became The Poynter Institute and which I joined in 2003.

While I don’t remember his remarks, I think I must have heard them because his thoughts about how to improve the relationship between reader and editor.  Poynter was ahead of his time.

“Today we need better two-way communications between reader and editor, between viewer and broadcaster. We are merely transient agents.” Poynter said. “The white space in the paper and time on the air belong to our clients.”

Chicago Tribune — 5 Years Hence [1980 as the Future]

I don’t remember who asked for this memo about the future or why we were looking at “five years hence” (1980).  This is probably one of my earliest “future look” memos.

At the time this was written, the Tribune was publishing both morning and afternoon editions.  Lots of them, as we had just merged the staffs of the afternoon newspaper {Chicago Today} and the morning Tribune. It was a grueling publishing schedule that was truly a 24-hour publishing cycle.

I still like this thought about giving readers more about what a story means.

We need to stop thinking “freshest is best”; a need to end the traditional cycle of publishing edition after edition, sometimes barely enough time to consider what the news means. The Tribune could reduce it cycle to two editions (major remakes) with replate options.  Continue to provide a morning and afternoon edition; new equipment will allow a savings in time – use the savings to give editors and reporters time to include the “what it means” in their story.

Here’s the full memo, a carbon copy from the “copy book” it was written on.

Pushing for Better Informational Graphics

One of the interesting challenges of creating a new kind of editing role, the graphics editor, was helping others in the newsroom see the importance of involving the visual folks early in the process.  Roger Fidler, a like-minded design advocate in the 1970s,  created the Newspaper Design Notebook, a magazine/newsletter to push the concept of better design, better editing and better visuals.  He asked me to write an article about how the Chicago Tribune handled series and lessons other newspapers might learn from our experiences.  Vol. 3/No. 2 was the last edition of the Newspaper Design Notebook. Pity.

Planning. Teamwork. Execution.

These are the elements for the successful handling of a newspaper series. Unfortunately, no matter how valid that concept, most series are put together by luck, guts and a prayer.

Chicago Tribune Graphics Service’s 1st Catalog

The success of the Chicago Tribune’s graphics desk allowed the company to offer a service.  We would send out slick sheets of graphics via express mail service on Saturday.  The first index provided a catalog of the more than 1,000 graphics sent to subscribers in the 70 weeks since the service started.  What we have tried to do is provide a list of the material that has some shelf life [usable after a period of time] or a graphic that could provide the base for  a graphic  that can be updated with  new information.

Here are the folks who made it work:

This index was put together under the direction of  Howard Finberg, Graphics Editor of the Chicago Tribune, with the appreciated assistance of Mark Maynard, an editing  assistant. Larry Townsend, Director of the Graphics Service and editor of the KNT News Wire at the Tribune, has had the difficult task of updating the file weekly and trying to make the project as handy for other editors as it has been for us. Tony Majeri has provided help in the graphic  look of the  project.

Every Friday Larry and I would gather up velox copies of the various graphics published or planned for the Tribune.

How a Graphics Editor Works at the Chicago Tribune

The first edition of the journal of the Society of Newspaper Designers (SND) featured excerpts of a speech I gave the the organization’s first convention.  The gather was held in Tribune Tower, in a meeting room called Campbell Hall (if memory serves).  That meant we probably had no more than a couple of hundred folks in the room.  The editors of Design took a transcript of my speech and turned into an article.  However, I didn’t know any of this until publication.

Reading it over today still gives me lots to cringe about — I was a bit arrogant.  OK, I was a full of self-importance about this new role.  The Chicago Tribune was the leader in informational graphics.  And I was the Graphics Editor.  I wished I had remembered to talk about how this was a team activity, not a solo sport.

However, I still like my conclusion, that all of the work we do is about making it better for the audience:

You can have the prettiest looking graphics in the paper and it doesn’t mean anything  if  it doesn’t  communicate with readers. That’s the most important thing as far as the Tribune and the graphics editors go. If we’re not communicating  with  the reader, we’ve lost it all. It’s my job to go for it.

Not sure what I was going for, but I guess we did.

Here’s the article from Design

Young Readers and the Future of the Chicago Tribune

In late 1973 and early 1974 I was part of a committee at the Chicago Tribune.  The committee members were all under 30 and most of us recent hires by the newspaper.  Our task was to explore what the paper should do to attract more younger readers.  This task was less about getting young adults to read newspapers but to read the Tribune instead of the Chicago Sun-Times.  Members of the committee: Ovie Carter, Gary Deeb, Howard Finberg, Clarence Page, Don Pierson, Bill Plunkett, Karen Schickedanz, Rick Soll and Linda Winer.  Here’s what we wrote in our summary:

Simply stated, the Chicago Tribune takes itself too seriously. This is not to diminish its role as one of the nation’s best newspapers. Rather, it is a suggestion that the time has come for the Chicago Tribune to slaughter, once and for all, many of its sacred cows.

Further on, we concluded:

What we are recommending, in a general way, is a relaxation of the restraint that prohibits surprise and thought-provoking material from appearing in the Tribune.   It is not a recommendation to relax or reduce in any  way the standards of journalism: Strict reverence for the facts, a sense of fairness, and an attention to thoro reporting.

Please note the unique spelling of thorough, as the Tribune was still gripped by a style book that used simplified spelling, a cause of the previous owner/publisher:  Col. Robert McCormick.

The  is available as a PDF file: chi trib_young readers group_02_1974