ABOVE THE FOLD - Star Tribunestmedia.startribune.com/documents/Abovethefold... · solutions 7 ipers2 ecycling,,#i n3t 0 aul 0arkw illt akea nyu nwantedc lothingo rs hoes 5sablei temsa

Who knew that gar-bage could be

so beautiful — and so interest-ing? For five days in April, readers of the Star Tribune were treated to an unusual and extremely visual project — an explainer about recycling, told mostly through detailed graphics and small chunks of type.

Those graphics, and that type, carried a lot of information. We learned how cans are recycled. How long it takes for a bunch of scrap paper to be turned into cardboard. Why glass can be recycled, but ceramics can’t (at least, not along with glass).

Variety freed up two pages a day — the front cover, and the back cover

— and presented the information on warm,

sepia-tinted pages with full-color photographs and graphics. Words

were kept to a minimum — a challenge for the

writer but one she embraced. Graphics were useful, informative, easy to grasp, inviting to study. Photography made empty bottles and mashed-up cans look like art.

We don’t often do projects in such a visual way. (If you missed the series, go to www.startribune.com/recycle.) So how did this one come about? The folks involved say that collaboration, communication and a clear focus made all the difference. Turn inside. ✒

JULY/AUGUST 2005 1

A different kind of project“If you think of reporting as only a writer’s act, you’re missing the big play. A graphic artist who researches a diagram of how a new vaccine works is a reporter. A photographer who captures images from a war zone is a reporter. The designer is a reporter.”

— Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Institute

ABOVE THE FOLD is a monthly newsletter produced for the employees of the Star Tribune. Unless otherwise indicated, its contents are the work of Laurie Hertzel, projects editor and writing coach.Copy editing is by wordsmiths Paul Walsh and Nancy Lo. Design is by the stylish Tippi Thole.

ABOVE THE FOLDAN OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER ON WRITING AND EDITINGStar Tribune

Minneapolis, Minn.July/August 2005

Vol. 5, No. 4

IN THIS ISSUE

2 Working together across crafts: Advice from the editors’ point of view

3 Making it beautiful and useful: Advice from the designer’s point of view

4 Making it concise and very, very, very tightly written: Advice from the writer’s point of view

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By Randy Miranda and Lisa ClausenStar Tribune Variety Editorand Features design director

How it came aboutRandy: For about five years, I’d been

bouncing around the idea of doing a re-cycling package on what happens after curbside pickup. I wanted to follow a pop can, a newspaper, a plastic bottle and a glass jar through the process, see how each gets made into something new and how those things end up back in your home, completing the cycle. Once we started talk-ing about it internally, we wanted design and content that resonated with readers and also was helpful and informative.

Lisa: Based on Randy’s idea we had clear direction about what we needed to show, and designer Laurie Harker ran with that. We wanted to make the presentation as inviting as possible. Laurie kept it clean and simple. The graphics were the same — clean, simple and informative. They had a lot of impact.

Planning and partnership

2 ABOVE THE FOLD

How to make it work Communicate, communicate, com-municate. Ideas, thoughts, goals, ex-pectations — there’s no such thing as over-communicating. If you run into a snafu, or have an idea, or can’t picture what others are talking about, say so. If you feel icky — say it. If you feel great — say it. Respect each other’s craft, exper-tise, opinions and ideas. Realize that we are all working to-ward the same goal — to produce a boffo package for the reader. Set up a meeting schedule and keep to it with specifi c agendas that include a recap. Check your ego at the door.Randy Miranda and Lisa Clausen

The covers (at right) of four installments of the series, April 18 to 21, 2005.

Importance of collaborationRandy: What was really key was that

we sat down as a group and talked about where the project might go. We came in with a concept, but everyone had the op-portunity to chime in. It was a team effort from the get-go. We decided right up front that if we’re devoting five days to some-thing it’s a bfd and worth everyone’s time.

Lisa: Randy was able to articulate to the group his desire to create a reader-friend-ly, full of utility and distinctly different look at a subject some readers might otherwise think boring. He often referred to the “heroes series” as a model for alternative story form and for making infor-mation easily accessible in a non-narrative way. [Fold notes: The “heroes series” was three double-truck charticles about paramedics, firefighters and police officers. It ran over three days in Variety after Sept. 11.]

Randy: We started talking early — months out — in con-crete terms. I cannot stress that enough. We knew Earth Day was our time peg, so from that Lisa and I sat down and figured out when steps needed to be taken. We did that at the first of the year. (Our pre-liminary discussions were in November and December.) We were also very clear from the very first group meeting what the expecta-tions were in terms of timing, even though we didn’t establish hard deadlines right off.

We talked from the beginning in terms of goals and expectations and parameters. Once again, I think it was an inclusive ef-fort — a bunch of people coming together from a bunch of disciplines to bring out the best we collectively have to offer. From a planning stand point it also helped that no one was rigid at the beginning. We all presented our perspectives and the proj-ect came into shape as a result of that.

Lisa: Everyone was invested, but no one felt they had to drive. Everyone seemed to feel a part of the process as we piled ideas on the table and then tried to sort through them. Everyone’s voice was heard. Ideas were built upon. Negativity was checked at

the door. I also felt a great sense of mutual respect and trust from reporter Karen Youso, in particular. That was a huge part of what made the project successful. She described her experience to me as sometimes she was in the driver’s seat, sometimes she rode shotgun, and sometimes she was in the back seat. And she was fine with that.

She also knew that she trusted and respected what each person on the team brought to the table. She knew that she

didn’t have all the answers, and she knew that that was OK. She didn’t have to

solve all of the problems — togeth-er we could solve all the problems.

Randy: I don’t want to set this up as nirvana. Any proj-ect takes lots of hard work, and there were bumps in the road. But solutions were reached col-lectively. One of the major prob-lems was that we had a wealth of information and there was the question of how to break that down into manageable parts.

At a couple of points we started to diverge from our mission. At those points it was important that the group talk through where we were and look at where we were go-ing…so we all had a voice in

the solution.One instance was with regard to the

graphics and the question of specificity. Should we show the actual process, or a representation of the process as a whole. We debated this point at some length. Ul-timately we let what we felt was the read-ers’ best interest be our guide.

Lisa: Regular meetings with clear agen-das and leadership were key. At the end of each meeting Randy would look each person in the eye and ask whether they felt OK about where we were. Then he did a wrap-up with here’s what we agreed to, here’s our next steps, etc.

Randy: As a result, everyone felt em-powered. Individual journalists pursued their craft. Everyone signed off in a group setting. We never left a meeting with some-one feeling icky. (And there was ickiness there.) We left the room feeling like we solved whatever the problem was. ✒

JULY/AUGUST 2005 3

By Laurie HarkerStar Tribune Features Designer

Recycling was probably one of the better collaborative efforts I’ve been involved in since I’ve been

here. All disciplines seemed very open to input from all other parties. Karen Y was so excited about the reporting/research/information that it was infec-tious to the rest of us: editors, copy edi-tors, designers, graphics artists alike.

We tried to meet weekly leading up to the project. There was so much information that getting a grasp on it seemed overwhelming at times. We fo-cused on one subject matter first: plas-tics. It was one area where Karen had done very early reporting, and that al-lowed us to map out one full cover and jump page, to determine what compo-nents we wanted on each day and to see how much information would likely fit.

We talked early about headlines, and I brought in ideas for visual presenta-tion. I wanted it to be pretty bold, too, hopefully, make the reader stop and look, then start reading the fun, educational bits of information and just keep on going. To do that, in addition to the impact of the lead art and headline, we needed visual elements distributed through-out the project, to add many entry points. Karen and editors were very flexible about allowing us to change the order of the information in order for visu-als to have the most impact.

The best part, of course, is the larger-than-life beer bottle. ✒

THE DESIGNER’S PERSPECTIVE

We talked earlyand oftento stay on track

“Everyone’s voice was heard. Ideas were built upon. Negativity was checked at the door.”— Lisa Clausen, Features design director

By Karen YousoStar Tribune Staff Writer

I was just minding my own business, hunched over my keyboard answering readers’ questions on cat pee and ice-

bergs, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Out of the pleasant face of my editor came three little words: “a recycling project,” and my throat tightened and my stomach rolled.

Oh, great, I thought. Here we go again. Three months and five double-trucks

later, I realize there was no “again” about it. Instead, I took a trip through a far dif-

ferent project world and not only survived but also had a reasonably good time.

The first clue that this wouldn’t be work as usual came at the first meeting. There would be three months of weekly meetings with all crafts present: design, il-lustration, reporting, editing, layout, pho-tography and online.

Two meetings later, my suspicions were confirmed. The reporter (me) would not be in the driver’s seat, but would be riding shotgun. Design would be in charge. That meant a different lexicon and I quickly learned to keep my ears open and my question-gun cocked and ready.

My first misunderstanding:Designer: Good stuff. Each of the four days, we’ll need fat graphs for the cover.Reporter: Yep. A week later, I present the fleshed-out copy. Nice long, dense, fat paragraphs. Plenty of type.Designer: No, no we don’t want more copy. Fat graphs means bigger type.

And so it went. I reported, sorted and wrote, only to learn that what I produced wasn’t what was wanted, exactly.

For example, I was told to introduce each day’s topic: the recycling of plastic, cans, paper and glass.

I thought about how to make such bor-ing subjects interesting to readers. Look-ing to their essential characters, I settled on treating sleek popular cans as movie stars, telling a fable for ubiquitous paper. Linking plastic to the movie “The Gradu-ate” was obvious, and glass had a dramat-ic Dante’s Inferno-like birth.

Inspired, I set to work writing great, creative, fact-filled stories for each day. Each less than 50 inches and proudly pre-sented at a weekly meeting.

Reporter (excited): We can pull out side-bars to shorten it and provide layers.Editor: No, we can’t use a story. We don’t want a story. We never asked you to write a story. We wanted an introduction to the topic, maybe six to eight inches. Reporter (speechless, confused, scram-bling to recover): You’re talking precede. Editor: Yes, like that.Reporter (staggers out of meeting think-ing): Report, but don’t write a story. I don’t get this. Man, I am really in some kind of new project land.

On second consideration, the project team decides to use my approach to each day’s topic, but in a truncated form. Part on cover and part on back. It meant re-writing and re-crafting to fit into the space allowed.

Finally, I began to understand. I would be writing into boxes. I could do that, but what happens to all the information? How do we tell the story? I was told not to worry. All the information would be there. It just wouldn’t be in a story. It would be packaged differently.

With a deep breath I let go of my copy. It was broken apart. Goodbye, hard-won transitions. Good-bye, kicker ending. And they reassmbled it. Chunks here. Gobs there. Cut this. Move that.

Goodbye, life in column inches. Sleep eluded me. Crazy dreams haunt-

ed me. I worried. I fretted. I put way too much

thinking into this project. If I had only known, I would not have sweated the writing so and saved myself a lot of time and trouble. How far into this new land I’ve traveled, far, far from the inverted pyramid.

I became more of an observer, a consultant. Taking direction, answering questions, putting my faith in the team of designers, illustrators and layout talent to usher the project, and me, to the end.

The proofs came out, and I started to understand. I caught myself thinking dif-ferently about the copy, more in terms of video than words on paper: “Then we’ll cut to this, we’ll reveal this to readers, here.”

The result was jam-packed pages of highly accessible information.

It worked, and far better than I’d ever imagined.

Our readers got it. They loved it. I re-ceived more responses than for anything else I’d done.

A reader: I’m not interested in recy-cling, but I read it. Liked it. I learned a lot. Thanks.A reader: I gave it a glance and realized af-ter a half-hour that I had read every word.Skeptical source: Gotta say, we’re sur-prised you did it so well.Educators, officials, industry spokespeo-ple: There’s nothing else like this anywhere, not even the Web. Can we get copies?

Who would have guessed that a bor-ing recycling series would have such mass appeal? It did, thanks to a team effort of all crafts and the over-arching concept driven by a good design.

Now, it’s back to life in column inches. I feel oddly refreshed and tired at the same time, like after good exercise.

It’s life as usual, except I’m less fearful of another tap to my shoulder. ✒

4 ABOVE THE FOLD

It takes a village The recycling project staff

Karen Youso: WriterLaurie Harker: DesignerMark Boswell: Graphics artistJane Friedmann: Graphics reporterJerry Holt: PhotographerChrista Witt: Online designerDave Braunger: Online designer Gail Rosenblum: EditorKathe Connair: Production editorLisa Clausen: Design editorEllen Lorentzson: Photo editorKaren Paurus: Online editorRandy Miranda: Project editor

THE REPORTER’S PERSPECTIVE

I had to write short — and learn a new language

Documents

ABOVE THE FOLD - Star Tribunestmedia.startribune.com/documents/Abovethefold... · solutions 7 ipers2 ecycling,,#i n3t 0 aul 0arkw illt akea nyu nwantedc lothingo rs hoes 5sablei temsa