Read Online Imponderables: Fun and Games by David Feldman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Feldman
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numbers will be there.”
We hear you, Karin. In fact, one of the great pleasures of reading The New Yorker is the certainty that there will be no such jumps. We had always assumed that the purposes of jumps was to force you to go to the back of the book, thus making advertisements in nonprime areas of the paper or magazine more appealing to potential clients. Chats with publishers in both the newspaper and magazine field have convinced us that other factors are more important.
A newspaper’s front page is crucial to newsstand sales. Editors want readers to feel that if they scan the front page, they can get a sense of the truly important stories of the day. If there were no jumps in newspapers, articles would have to be radically shortened or else the number of stories on the front page would have to be drastically curtailed.
Less obviously, magazine editors want what Robert E. Kenyon, Jr., executive director of the American Society of Magazine Editors, calls “a well-defined central section.” Let’s face it. Most magazines and newspapers are filled with ads, but with the possible exception of fashion and hobbyist magazines, readers are usually far more interested in articles. Magazine editors want to concentrate their top editorial features in one section to give at least the impression that the magazine exists as a vehicle for information rather than advertising. J. J. Hanson, chairman and CEO of Hanson Publishing Group, argues that sometimes jumps are necessary:
An article that the editor feels is too long to position entirely in a prime location will jump to the back of the book, thus permitting the editor to insert another important feature within the main feature or news “well.” Many publishers try very hard to avoid jumps.
The unhappiest version of a jump is one where an article jumps more than once so that instead of completing the article after the first jump, the reader reads on for a while and then has to jump again. That’s almost unforgivable.
Hanson adds that another common reason for jumps in magazines, as opposed to newspapers, is color imposition:
Most magazines do not run four-color or even two-color throughout the entire issue. Often the editor wants to position the major art treatment of his features or news items within that four-color section. In order to get as many articles as possible in that section, the editor sometimes chooses to jump the remaining portions of the story to a black and white signature.
Of course, advertising does play more than a little role in the creation of jumps. Most publications will sell clients just about any size ad they want. If an advertiser wants an odd-sized ad, one that can’t be combined with other ads to create a full page of ads, editorial content is needed. It is much easier to fill these holes with the back end of jumps than to create special features to fill space. The New Yorker plugs these gaps with illustrations and funny clippings sent in by readers, which, truth be told, may be read more assiduously than their five-part book-length treatments on the history of beets.
Submitted by Karin Norris of Salinas, California.
WHY DO BASKETBALLS HAVE FAKE SEAMS? DO THEY HAVE A PRACTICAL PURPOSE OR ARE THEY MERELY DECORATIVE?
----
A caller on a radio talk show asked this question indignantly, as if the ball industry were purposely perpetrating a fraud, at worst, and foisting unnecessary decoration on a ball, at best. Before you accuse basketball manufacturers of making a needless fashion statement, consider that most basketball players need all the help they can get manipulating a basketball. A basketball is too big for all but the Kareems and Ewings of the world to grasp with their fingers. Those “fake” seams are there to help you grip the ball (similarly, quarterbacks make sure their fingers make contact with the seams when passing).
Basketball manufacturers make two kinds of seams, narrow and wide.
We hear you, Karin. In fact, one of the great pleasures of reading The New Yorker is the certainty that there will be no such jumps. We had always assumed that the purposes of jumps was to force you to go to the back of the book, thus making advertisements in nonprime areas of the paper or magazine more appealing to potential clients. Chats with publishers in both the newspaper and magazine field have convinced us that other factors are more important.
A newspaper’s front page is crucial to newsstand sales. Editors want readers to feel that if they scan the front page, they can get a sense of the truly important stories of the day. If there were no jumps in newspapers, articles would have to be radically shortened or else the number of stories on the front page would have to be drastically curtailed.
Less obviously, magazine editors want what Robert E. Kenyon, Jr., executive director of the American Society of Magazine Editors, calls “a well-defined central section.” Let’s face it. Most magazines and newspapers are filled with ads, but with the possible exception of fashion and hobbyist magazines, readers are usually far more interested in articles. Magazine editors want to concentrate their top editorial features in one section to give at least the impression that the magazine exists as a vehicle for information rather than advertising. J. J. Hanson, chairman and CEO of Hanson Publishing Group, argues that sometimes jumps are necessary:
An article that the editor feels is too long to position entirely in a prime location will jump to the back of the book, thus permitting the editor to insert another important feature within the main feature or news “well.” Many publishers try very hard to avoid jumps.
The unhappiest version of a jump is one where an article jumps more than once so that instead of completing the article after the first jump, the reader reads on for a while and then has to jump again. That’s almost unforgivable.
Hanson adds that another common reason for jumps in magazines, as opposed to newspapers, is color imposition:
Most magazines do not run four-color or even two-color throughout the entire issue. Often the editor wants to position the major art treatment of his features or news items within that four-color section. In order to get as many articles as possible in that section, the editor sometimes chooses to jump the remaining portions of the story to a black and white signature.
Of course, advertising does play more than a little role in the creation of jumps. Most publications will sell clients just about any size ad they want. If an advertiser wants an odd-sized ad, one that can’t be combined with other ads to create a full page of ads, editorial content is needed. It is much easier to fill these holes with the back end of jumps than to create special features to fill space. The New Yorker plugs these gaps with illustrations and funny clippings sent in by readers, which, truth be told, may be read more assiduously than their five-part book-length treatments on the history of beets.
Submitted by Karin Norris of Salinas, California.
WHY DO BASKETBALLS HAVE FAKE SEAMS? DO THEY HAVE A PRACTICAL PURPOSE OR ARE THEY MERELY DECORATIVE?
----
A caller on a radio talk show asked this question indignantly, as if the ball industry were purposely perpetrating a fraud, at worst, and foisting unnecessary decoration on a ball, at best. Before you accuse basketball manufacturers of making a needless fashion statement, consider that most basketball players need all the help they can get manipulating a basketball. A basketball is too big for all but the Kareems and Ewings of the world to grasp with their fingers. Those “fake” seams are there to help you grip the ball (similarly, quarterbacks make sure their fingers make contact with the seams when passing).
Basketball manufacturers make two kinds of seams, narrow and wide.
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