Only two stories made it on the front page of Benton County's newspaper(s) today. There was, of course, the obligatory military story mandated by Warren Stephens himself. Today was Day 8. Are they making this a month-long series that has yet to have covered anything local?
The other depended on which edition of the paper you received. In the Daily Record, it was a story about school bus safety. But that apparently wasn't important enough for the Morning News, which went with a hunting story.
So why was there only room for two stories? Because someone high up thinks you're not smart enough to find your way through the paper.
The section is called "Getting Started," because, presumably, the readers need help ... getting started. I don't know if that's true, but it sounds like something the people who run these papers would themselves find useful. What the section does is give you a snippet of a story that appears elsewhere in the paper, because, I guess, we're too impatient or too stupid to turn the pages and realize there is more news (and I use that term loosely) inside.
When we look at the business plan, logic comes up lacking. There used to be two or three stories (printed elsewhere in the Record or the Democrat Gazette) highlighted across the top of the Daily Record. Today's Morning News highlights one, while the Daily Record highlights zero. The purpose of the highlights, of course, is to advertise the product to those passing by, those who may be looking at it in a newspaper rack or inside a gas station, in the hopes that one of the stories will entice a sale.
So the new format — can I call them anything but lowlights? — appear below the fold, at the bottom of page one. We have now eliminated any marketing benefit. Once someone is in the position to see the bottom of page one, they also now own the paper. "Getting Started" probably won't make anyone decide to buy another paper.
The only benefit I can think of is that "Getting Started" could help readers identify the interests, politics or biases of the respective newspapers, as each paper can apparently choose its own stories. The Morning News, today, lowlighted a sports story, which makes sense only if Record metro editor Mike Jones moved to the Rogers office or the two papers are becoming the inevitable regurgitation of each other. The Daily Record's lowlight is about Washington County finances, which makes sense only if your paper is in Washington County.
Happy reading.
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