I read The Miami Herald every morning as I’ve always done, but I subscribe to the online edition, rather than have it delivered to the house. I read the e-edition daily.
I recently found out that since I subscribe to the online edition, I can read all of the McClatchy-owned newspapers that way – The State in Charleston, SC; The Olympian (Olympia, WA), The Modesto Bee (Modesto, CA), The Telegraph (Macon, GA) and so many others, which I like to do.
One thing I noticed, with just The State newspaper so far, there might be more, is that they just end a story on the page and leave white space. Now maybe since I’m reading it from another state, ads are there and they just don’t show where I am reading from, but I don’t think so. I saw on the front page of the Sun-Herald, the Biloxi, MS newspaper, this big gap next to the masthead, but inside the paper, there is none of this white space stuff.
I’ve been in and around the newspaper industry for so many years, and I’ve never seen this. I used to like this tv show called 800 Words. This guy wrote a column for the newspaper and it had to be exactly 800 words, he would add or subtract words to make it 800 in the column he wrote. The show really has nothing to do with his newspaper column and it’s a dumb name for such a great, but the 800 words concept in a way, it sort of reminds me of this – just end it wherever you want.
It’s sort of interesting to see in the paper, where it just goes blank, but it messes with my sensibilities. It’s such valuable space to be wasted, a little panel cartoon could fit there (Tomversation perhaps?). And speaking of the comics, it’s one of those things were every McClatchy newspaper has the same comics page – same comics, same layout, etc. No individuality.
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