Readership Institute: Excellence in Small Newspapers: Galleries: Sun

Sun (Bremerton, WA)

Images 1, 2, 2a: The Sun signals its local focus from the top with an almost all-local front page. Boxcars to the right of the mast and stripped across the bottom promote inside content, a technique that carries through to inside section fronts. Refers point readers from one story to related pieces elsewhere in the section.

Editors seek a mix of content to display on section fronts. On these front pages, for instance, at least one story focuses on ordinary people and/or was written in a feature style approach. There is a robust mix of text treatment throughout the paper - a good balance of mid-length and shorter stories, brief packages and listings.

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Image 3: Note the front-page positioning of corrections and also customer-service information. On this day, the Sun's voice mail system was shutting down in the evening for repairs and a prominent box emphasized the direct numbers that readers should call.

Images 4, 5: Local doesn't have to mean parochial; front-page pointers often mention something from national and world news, which begins on the front of the B section. Commentary on national/international news is grouped in this section too, and it is cross promoted from the A section's locally-focused editorial page with a seven-day listing of columnists stripped across the bottom of the page.

A three-element headline style adds to ease of reading: label (denoting the topic or location); main headline and an explanatory deck headline.

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Images 6, 7: Refers off fronts are frequent in all sections.

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