Too many sections

Posted by Jon
After flirting over the years with various newspapers – most notably The Independent and The Guardian – I’ve recently gone back to The Times. I love its writing – crisp, original, providing enough detail to make you feel well-informed without leaving you overwhelmed with information. Just like a good proposal, I guess.

But its structure? Oh my goodness! Inserted inside the main paper last Friday was the “Arts & Ents” section. Inside that: the “Mindgames” supplement. Next came “Bricks & Mortar”. Inside that – in this bizarre Russian doll of a newspaper – “the game”, their soccer update (its title in supposedly-trendy lower-case). Inside that – a separate listing of the coming season’s football fixtures. None of these were separately bound or stapled, you understand – just six different sections within the overall paper, needing to be separated out from one another before any individual component could be enjoyed without interruption.

I can guess where the problem arises: each area of content doubtless has its own editor who wants the glory of a separate section rather than seeing their material blended coherently into the overall document. And production lead times may play a part, too. But the result is a total mess – feeling like it’s structured for the writers rather than the readers. And there’s a lesson in that for those of us who develop proposals.​