The art of omission
Noteworthy: Quality newspapers once used dense blocks of text to signal their high standards. Nowadays, even they rely on white space, thereby promising their readers relief from the pressure to read.
Column Quality newspapers once signaled their claim with deserts of lead. Nowadays, they also rely on white space and promise their audience relief from the compulsion to read.When a newspaper undergoes a visual renovation today, one result is almost always certain: the new layout welcomes the reader with more "white space", i.e. more empty space on which there is no text, not even a picture and/or an information graphic. Even traditional titles, which have long been considered a guarantee of rigorous thoughtfulness, cannot escape this trend. Hamburger Zeit, for example, has been transformed into a decidedly airy structure in which there is suddenly so much space next to the text columns that critical readers can comfortably jot down their marginal glosses. Die Welt, the Berlin daily from Springer Verlag, sometimes leaves as much space for nothing on its page 3 as is reserved for editorials in other papers. Now the Tagesspiegel, which is also printed in the German capital, has followed suit and entices readers with very manageable text clouds on its large-format pages. There are editions in which such a newspaper only includes a medium-sized report with a series of short news items in the margins. The entire foreign reporting of this metropolitan newspaper is then reduced to two or three texts that offer more than mere protocol notes.
Modern layout for quality newspapers therefore consists above all in the art of omission. It calculates with a reader who obviously wants to know at first glance whether the newspaper promises him relief from the compulsion to read. The sheer encyclopaedic mass of text that used to be the hallmark of the "broadsheets" is now being resolutely stripped away. The old promise of informing the reader as comprehensively as possible and illuminating the background has lost its suggestion. What is needed today is a convincing signal of clarity.
However, this is created primarily through selection and omission. Selection rather than abundance is a tried and tested means of gaining attention, one of the scarcest resources on the media market. This is the only way to get the reassuring message across: Here is the really important information that is worth spending the scarce reading time on.
Just as nouvelle cuisine filled its plates with quotations of dishes rather than actual meals, the modern layout of some quality newspapers puts the aesthetic staging of meaning before thorough information. In times of crisis, this kind of layout concept is also very pleasant for publishers, as it saves space and costs for editorial content that is no longer printed.
In the long term, however, this can have highly undesirable consequences. If the text is so clearly devalued visually, it loses its appeal in the long run. You can already observe this with readers who prefer to read Focus-type magazines. Reading becomes browsing, the supposed news magazine is treated like a coffee-table journal that is used as a secondary medium. Anyone who uses visual tricks to make readers believe that they can inform themselves about the world without any effort will have to disappoint them. Even if quality newspapers are in a bad way and their future may be uncertain, they should not commit suicide out of fear of death and give up what is their indispensable strength.
Heribert Seifert sees airy layouts primarily as a way of saving money.
Modern layout for quality newspapers therefore consists above all in the art of omission. It calculates with a reader who obviously wants to know at first glance whether the newspaper promises him relief from the compulsion to read. The sheer encyclopaedic mass of text that used to be the hallmark of the "broadsheets" is now being resolutely stripped away. The old promise of informing the reader as comprehensively as possible and illuminating the background has lost its suggestion. What is needed today is a convincing signal of clarity.
However, this is created primarily through selection and omission. Selection rather than abundance is a tried and tested means of gaining attention, one of the scarcest resources on the media market. This is the only way to get the reassuring message across: Here is the really important information that is worth spending the scarce reading time on.
Just as nouvelle cuisine filled its plates with quotations of dishes rather than actual meals, the modern layout of some quality newspapers puts the aesthetic staging of meaning before thorough information. In times of crisis, this kind of layout concept is also very pleasant for publishers, as it saves space and costs for editorial content that is no longer printed.
In the long term, however, this can have highly undesirable consequences. If the text is so clearly devalued visually, it loses its appeal in the long run. You can already observe this with readers who prefer to read Focus-type magazines. Reading becomes browsing, the supposed news magazine is treated like a coffee-table journal that is used as a secondary medium. Anyone who uses visual tricks to make readers believe that they can inform themselves about the world without any effort will have to disappoint them. Even if quality newspapers are in a bad way and their future may be uncertain, they should not commit suicide out of fear of death and give up what is their indispensable strength.
Heribert Seifert sees airy layouts primarily as a way of saving money.
> Heribert Seifert is the media and culture correspondent of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Germany.
