Talk:News design

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Pruning or Playing Favorites?

I am not sure what elevates the News Designer consultants Ernie Smith chose to leave behind over the others he seems to weed out. Recommend a little more explanation in your comments on why some designers seem to make your cut and others don't. Designing news 04:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a problem taking everyone out of the article, to be honest with you. But even among the favorites I apparently seem to be playing, I cut out quite a few links to Alan Jacobson's sites along with quite a few links to Visual Editors-related sites. (I was getting the feeling that Robb and Alan were removing one another's links.)

For me, the prevailing factor is value – does the addition of the site add something to the article besides a pitch for a consultant? One could argue that with the heavily-used community aspect of Visual Editors and the daily "talker" factor of Best Front Design, both sites offer more than self-promotional aspects to them.

Honestly, I don't have a problem removing Alan or Robb from the "notable in the field" bit, but I feel Mario Garcia's earned his place as one of the best news designers in history (and he might actually be a somewhat recognizable name outside of the field because of the high profile of his redesigns), and Tim Harrower and Ron Reason have a higher profile due to the fact that their books are heavily used in and out of classrooms.

But here's the big difference. Other people added Tim and Mario and Ron. They didn't self-promote themselves. Other people thought they were worthy of addition to the page. - Stick Fig 18:13, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

The example provided of adding links to living designers, selling their books only encourages others to do so, especially when they might be neophytes in the Wiki world. Your exclusion of other designers, and demonstrated eagerness to slice out others without apparent research or discussion, using only a brief comment on the history page seems kind of weak, and frankly seems to violate Wikipedia's goal for a Neutral Point of View. Other design pages do not seem to have such advocacy for living people, nor do they hawk their wares.

I've worked with Ed Henninger for a couple of years now, and having seen his design work, portfolio of satisfied clients, his clear text and advice, and his efforts to develop the fourth estate in developing democracies in Tblisi, Yerevan, and Kiev (can we say supporting American ideals and our concept of a free press?) all make his design work every bit as useful as the ones you seem to advocate.

Ed added his link to the page at my recommendation, based on my wiki experience in other fora.

As far as the value added or relevance of designers by having their name on a textbook, even a widely used one? - I have my doubts about that. There is more to life than the schoolhouse.

I request you take a look at his website: Henninger Consulting and respond before you cut again. Designing news 01:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't a collection of links. It's an encyclopedia. Ultimately, you're telling me nothing I don't already know with your message.

The problem that the article was facing was that it was becoming just that.

To be honest with you, the "Sorry guys" comment was specifically put in because I have a personal relationship with Robb and I was removing most of his links for purposes of neutrality, not because I had a beef with him. No matter what way you spin it, I was trying to push for a more neutral point of view, not less of one. Wikipedia's long-standing policy, which I threw on your talk page, says self-promotion is bad.

The site you offered up is promoting a consulting firm. There's no additional value that will make the average reader say, "Wow, that's what newspaper design is." I mean, there are other parts of the Internet where Henniger can promote his consulting firm, and if Henniger was considered worthy of and notable enough for a Wikipedia article, it could go there. But Wikipedia's goal is not to help Ed get his name out there, just as we wouldn't use it to get any of the other consultants' names out there.

One could make the argument that consultants are only a minor subsection of designers anyway, so why just use them? Emmett Smith is considered one of the best newspaper designers in the country, why not throw his name on? Or Martin Gee? Or Richard Curtis? (Actually, he probably should be added, now that I think about it.) Or Nanette Bisher?

The answer is that, ultimately, the article isn't about who gets on the page. It's about newspaper design. Tim Harrower wrote a popular book and is a popular speaker and newspaper consultant; people are more likely to be able to attach his name to the topic. I apologize for being harsh here and mean no personal offense by this, but when people talk about how newspapers are designed, they're going to be talking about Mario Garcia, not Ed Henniger. It's not about giving exposure to the people featured; it's about giving a full picture of news design to the reader.

Now excuse me while I go add Richard Curtis to the list. He deserves to be there; his role in news design (seeing as he was such an influential part of USA Today's formation) was and is fairly innovative. I'm not trying to be rude by making value judgments; I'm trying to create a more useful article. - Stick Fig 05:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Ernie, you're playing favorites, plain and simple. You seem to be violating the Neutral Point of View policy every time you remove one advertising individual to hawk someone else's wares. It may be something you care passionately about, but your response above indicates you never bothered to read Ed Henninger's numerous columns or bothered to research other designers beyond your favorites -- despite what your user pages claims you do. See several of Ed's columns posted at the Best Read Designing news 02:53, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not promoting or dis-promoting anyone for financial gain or out of personal interest. Stop acting like I am. I mean, honestly, did you read the part where I noted that you're not supposed to self-promote or that we're creating an article about newspaper design? Whose wares am I hawking? I don't know Richard Curtis, Mario Garcia, Tim Harrower or Ron Reason. With the exception of Curtis, I didn't add their names. The other names I removed, I removed because they added themselves.

The people listed now, they're just people who are known in the industry because they've done impressive things that would put them in a place to deserve to be there. You know, people get mentioned on sites for reasons other than self-promotion.

You're only reading what you want to get out of this, which is that I'm for some reason favoring known personalities over less-known ones. Of course! Those are the people who will be easily recognized by readers.

Let me quote this so it's clear to you: Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam. Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed.

I'm not adding a self-promoting link for Ed, because that's not what this article is for. I'll remove all of them first. I looked through his web site, and whatever articles were there, they were buried deep in the site. What showed up for me, in all the links I looked at, was the pitch to have your paper designed by Ed.

This is why we can't have nice things. Seriously, find another place to do promotion. Wiki policy clearly has my back in this case; you're not going to win here. - Stick Fig 07:06, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

A notables compare and contrast

I just did a search on Google for the people currently and previously on the notables list and sites currently linked in the article, as a compare/contrast. Here's what I found:

• "Newseum" – over 1 million results
• "newsdesigner.com" – 100,000 results
• "Mario Garcia" +newspaper – 42,000 results (without the newspaper modifier, it was 400,000; with "+newspapers", there were another 27,000)
• "visualeditors.com" – 40,800 results
• "Robb Montgomery" – 35,000 results
• "Brass Tacks Design" – 25,900 results
• "Tim Harrower" – 20,000 results
• "Alan Jacobson" newspaper – 15,400 results (there was also an unrelated author who shares Alan's name, though the results for just his name clearly favored the consultant)
• "Ron Reason" – 12,000 results
• "Richard Curtis" "USA Today" – 9,310 results (there is also a famous director who shares Richard's name)
• "Ed Henninger" – 337 results
• "Henninger Consulting" – 130 results
• "Best Front Design" – 71 results, but the feature's only about a month old and most of these links are from high-profile journalism resources like Poynter.

I think I can make a pretty good argument that I'm not showing favoritism here but actually leaving in known newspaper design personalities over self-promotional entries. In fact, I probably took out people who didn't deserve to be taken out because I was trying to be fair. - Stick Fig 19:49, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Categories

I just started Category:News design. What should be the relationship between this page and category, and those of Page layout and Category:Page layout, etc.? Maurreen (talk) 07:34, 13 February 2010 (UTC)