The Printer’s Devil

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Over the years, editors have argued about jumps — That are those stories on the front page or elsewhere that are continued to another page.

I’ve worked for papers that represented both schools of thoughts — it’s a horrible sin to make any jump for fear of losing readers or those who prize “story count” on the front page and jump every story.

I’ve tended to fall in the middle. I’ve found that most readers will read the small-town daily newspaper from front to back so I’ve never been too concerned about “losing” readers who don’t follow the story inside.

And especially for a local story, it’s a lot faster and simpler to jump rather than trying to fit a story into an oddball hole on the front and then trying to remake the front while you’re wrestling with your press deadline. And there are those stories that you’re doing your readers a service by offering more space for them with jumps.

On the other hand, I never cared for too many jumps. As I’ve mentioned, time is the managing editor’s enemy and a lot of jumps soak up a lot of time.

Despite the promises of sales literature for all those fancy desktop publishing programs, jumps aren’t too automatic and they tend to require a lot of labor on your part.

And speaking from sad experience, if you have a bunch of jumps it’s easy to lose track of how many jumps you need to get on an inside page. (Like Deming says, if there’s something you can do to eliminate a chance of disaster later, do so.)

You’d be surprised at the number of people who will call you later that day or next morning and demand that you read over the phone the jump that got left out of the paper.

However, I always do one jump. That’s the lead article on the front page.

Most editors will put the most significant story on the top half of the front page above the fold.

That’s the half everyone sees in the news vending machine. You’ll always see someone bent over, reading the top story through the vending machine glass.

Usually, if they can read the whole story, they’ll stand up and walk on. But if the story jumps, odds are they’ll drop coins into the machine and buy a copy.

Other random thoughts:

• As I’ve mentioned, always count the number of stories that jump and make sure you count the jumps inside.

• Keep the jumps on one page, such as a back page, if possible. That, and the front page should be the last two pages that go back to the printer.

Send the front first. Remember Murphy’s Law: If there are any last-typos on the front, they’ll like change it and the jump as well and you have to fix and resed two pages instead of one.

• Adopt some type of system for jumps. Make a set routine and stick to it.

When doing multiple jumps from a page I always started on the upper right corner and worked clockwise.

Then inside, the jumps would be stacked off one one side of the “pasteboard,” i.e., the page in descending order.

Have a set jump head and style that can be adapted to any number of columns.