The future of journalism: Page design

Forgive me if I'm a few years late with this, but like other media commentators, I have plenty of opinions to offer up about the future of journalism.

Page design is an area of newspaper production that is close to my heart. As I am applying for page design jobs across the Northeast, I am continually thinking about what place this career will be in in 25 years.

I was once asked in an interview where I thought journalism would go in the future. Though I was interviewing for a reporting position, naturally I offered up my opinion of page design. In short, I told the interviewer that a few decades from now newspapers won't look like today's broadsheets.

Already broadsheet design has incorporated more tab-type pieces. Big, bold headlines, cutouts, multiple refers all over the page, graphics, etc. all dominate many broadsheets.

But 25 years from now, I don't see that trend continuing. In fact, I can see many broadsheets cutting down to tab size and into what Plattsburgh State Journalism Department Chair Shawn Murphy once told me could be pamphlets with QR codes.

As the internet becomes more prevalent in journalism and Twitter-style communication becomes the social norm, readers aren't going to pay for paper and online versions of news.

In an effort to keep the "paper" alive, I can see newspapers adopting a mini newsprint edition with tab headlines, big art, ledes and nut grafs. That's it.

My example isn't flashy or fun, but creating newspapers that look like that could actually benefit those newspapers still kicking around decades from now.

For one, a move like that would keep the actual paper alive, giving old-school crusties something to hold while not boring the newest wave of kids getting interested in the news. Papers would be able to stay papers, not online aggregates.

Secondly, a paper like this would drive online hits, something that papers are trying to do now. By giving a lede and a nut graf, readers can get hooked, making them want to scan the QR code with their smarterphone of the future — which I'm sure will make the iPhone 5 look like a Nokia TracFone.

Thirdly, it gives designers like me a job into the future. Though you'd probably need just one or two people per paper to design a small QR-filled tab, online editions for iPad, iPhone and the Web could still be produced. That means you'd have a QR edition and a regular edition, though that wouldn't be printed per say. To tease to it, papers could toss a QR next to their flags that would bring readers to an online print edition.

Papers could then give away their QR editions for 25 cents an issue. Then they could charge either per story viewed or for an online subscription to both their websites and online print editions. For those with an online print edition already, papers could deliver the QR edition to take on the go.

Do I hope the print product dies? No. But if it must, the QR edition format would be a good alternative. Design would live and cheaper printing costs would give papers more resources to put toward quality journalism and to rebuild newsrooms to what they once were.