DARTS
The Darts & Laurels column is written by Gloria
Cooper, CJR's managing editor, to whom nominations should
be addressed.
UNDER
THE INFLUENCE (OF NEWS)
Responsible
journalism is all alike; every piece of irresponsible journalism
is irresponsible in its own way. Take, for instance, the Stamford
Advocate's hands-on test of how best to get from the daily's offices
in southern Connecticut to Boston's South Station. On a recent
spring morning, staff writer Thomas J. McFeeley boarded Amtrak's
new Acela bullet train, while three blocks away at almost that
very same moment, staff writer Matt Breslow was buckling himself
into his car; their respective accounts of the time, cost, and
comfort of the trip were featured in a pair of first-person tick-tocks
in The Advocate's May 6 issue. McFeeley's story of window seat,
coffee, bathroom, and the overheard conversation of his fellow
travelers was reassuringly sleep-inducing. But Breslow's tale
of traffic and tolls was far less pedestrian than readers -- not
to mention the other drivers on I-95 -- surely would have wished.
From his early signal that he had "generally heeded my editors
. . . and stayed . . . at 70 to 80 m.p.h.," Breslow's narrative
was driven by watching for troopers, wondering about radar guns,
worrying about speeding tickets, and wishing he dared go even
higher in breaking the 55-65 limit. In the wake of the dubious
victory (by twenty-six minutes) of road over rail, an Advocate
Memorial Day editorial a few weeks later seemed especially ironic.
Subject: "The need for law enforcement agencies to make special
efforts to keep motorists from harming themselves and others through
irresponsible behavior."
NEW DIMENSIONS (AND OLD) When
that Broadway babe sang, "You Gotta Have a Gimmick,"
The Toronto Star must have been listening. Tucked into its April
21 special "3-D edition" was a tiny pair of red and
green plastic glasses designed, as the lead story on the Star's
front page explained, to provide a three-dimensional view of certain
graphics and pictures sprinkled throughout the sections. For help
in spotting those "stunning" images, readers were referred
to a page-two guide. The guide began with a list of fifteen advertisers,
along with the number of the page on which each of the various
stunners, achieved through the wizardry of the paper's technologists,
could be found. (Below that was a list directing readers to the
similarly manipulated images in its news sections.) As if to make
sure that readers would, as its article predicted, spend "a
lot more time" looking at a 3-D image than at a regular one,
the paper announced a contest for "favorite 3-D ad."
But whoever won, boasted the Star, one thing was clear: "This
special edition is filled with images unlike anything you've seen
in a newspaper before." Or will, one fervently hopes, again.
Indeed, the gimmick almost makes a more classic approach, as exemplified
in the March 8 edition of a California paper, seem virtuous in
its forthrightness. "More than 125,000 daily Press-Enterprise
readers have eaten at a Mexican restaurant in the past 30 days,"
read a sombrero-decorated box below a group of ads for local cantinas
and cafés. "Advertise your restaurant in Riverside
and San Bernardino for under $250.00 and get a free feature story."
