Over at the Charles Apple Blog, a report that Apple put up about some scary Tribune production tactics has caused a huge stir. Seventy-seven comments and counting, this is clearly an issue no one should miss.
My take: I don’t find the templated modules to be such a problem provided they are done in a tasteful manner. They need to fix the reported problems that don’t allow local copy editors to change the text within said modules. For inside pages, this is a fairly streamlined way of saving the company money and only hurting the readers when it is done poorly. That said, I am not comfortable with where this is going. If section fronts and styles are being overtaken by the “mother ship,” then we have a serious problem. That concept would effectively make newspapers pointless. The paper may as well shrink down to a one-section local.
Filed under: Newspapers, Print, State of the Industry
