The SOS is a way of tightly editing the information that appears on a section front — basically eliminating the ever-cumbersome jump, so that there is always a complete and containable thought on the cover.
“The way that I couch it to reporters is, you’re going to get three inches of type out there, one way or another,” said Awtry. “This lets you control exactly what you want to say with those three inches — and it still lets you have your narrative.”
Sara Quinn: How is the SOS format different than what you’d done in the past?
Josh Awtry: This has been a big cultural change in our newsroom. In the past, if it didn’t have a headline, subhead, byline and narrative, it didn’t count. We had a very templated approach to 1A — we had four story starts out there that jumped.
Convincing people that this three inches of type — the SOS — was different from their 3.4 inches of type was a hurdle. I’m pretty happy to say it’s a hurdle that we’ve mostly overcome. … Over the past few months here, it’s been a huge sea change.
When we go to our new redesign later this year, the better part of the front page will be made up of these containable elements.
How did you introduce the SOS?
Awtry: We started by going really simple. Basically, we amped up the stand-alone photo formula. First, it was making the corollary to “Hey, it’s just like a stand-alone photo -– here’s your photo, here’s two-and-a-half inches of type, teasing to the story.”
What would you say the benefit of this story form is to the reader?
Awtry: We know that people follow jumps if the story is interesting enough. My whole caveat is, why gamble on that? Why gamble on whether or not they’re going to make that jump? Let’s give people a lot of choices. Let’s answer readers’ questions directly. Let’s give them a complete thought.
PDF EXAMPLESSo, in the end, the benefit is that it caters to both types of readers. It caters to the readers who want to spend 10 seconds and then move on with their lives. Likewise, a reader can go into page A9 and there’s your wonderful, anecdotal lead … about half of which would have made it onto the cover before it jumped mid-sentence. That’s for your core reader and we’re not giving anybody any less in that sense.
That’s a good articulation of the way people read. Does the SOS have a different look? What do readers see that sets it apart?
Awtry: We developed a unique typography for anything that held to the front. But it was still very much relegated to the “tease” category at that point, and not the real informational category.
To start out, the reporters and editors were writing these story summaries. And then, we wanted to get a little more advanced with it — to create a hold to the front lead-in with three questions and three answers, that kind of approach.
What are some of the challenges you faced in getting people to accept and embrace this new format?
Awtry: In the end, I just started to do it, which is not an approach that I endorse or recommend. But, where were at this point … it was the place we needed to start. People needed to see what it should look like, where to start.
I was very loath to give somebody an SOS template, because, the next thing you know — every SOS would look the same. And, a year from now, that one form would become part of the language. Then, if you want to change it, it takes another act of Congress.
How do you determine which stories get this treatment?
Awtry: Let’s say the business editor has this great story and he wants to blow it out on the business cover. And someone on the senior management staff says “That story really belongs on 1A.” But in reality, it would probably be on the bottom of 1A.
For me, this is a way to couch it and say, “Look everybody wins. You can have your cake and eat it too. Because on 1A, we can do an SOS, but it won’t preclude being able to blow out the story with all of the photos and graphics and the approaches you want to take on the business cover.”
Would you say it takes a lot of constant, daily communication to do it well?
Awtry: I don’t want to overstate this and make it come off like we are reinventing the wheel, because papers have been doing this for a long time. But, for us, the big change has been the history of it.
At a lot of papers, it’s like … get to the point, get to the point. Quit with the throat clearing anecdotal lead and just give me the nut graph, because it’s not going to make the jump. People can deride me for trying to kill long form journalism, but this is being done to support it.
I think the personality-laden, anecdotal leads, filled with emotion and energy shouldn’t be spiked, just because they’re going to jump mid-thought.
That’s a great way to put it. You’re not killing long form narrative, what you’re doing is putting an end to an old production style that led to things missing the point and not jumping where you wanted them to.
Awtry: The trick in doing this, I think, is training the reporters to see that it’s not a tease to the story, in a traditional sense. It’s the nut graph. It’s the best information.
How does the SOS translate to the Web?
Awtry: That’s why it has been so easy to sell this. What do you get on the Web? You get the headline and then a short tease. Then you click on it and you get the full story. It doesn’t make you jump mid-thought.
But we usually rework the things we do for the Web. I’m looking at one right now where the headline says “Should we worry?” Then, what you see on the (printed) page is a dollar bill with George Washington’s head ducking out of the way. I mean, you see the package, the context when it’s in print. Online, you don’t get the benefit of that.
We’ve got a really savvy online desk. They’ll make the most of it. Sometimes, they’ll keep the flavor of the thing, while making it work in a searchable way.
Are the SOS forms primarily on your front page, or do you use them on other section fronts, as well?
Awtry: For now, it’s on the front page. We do it very routinely on the front page. Talk to me again in about three months and it will be on every section front.
