mario garcia

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A brief should be briefWhen we conducted the often-quoted Poynter Institute Eye-

Tracking Research, it became obvious that briefs—those short and

nicely packaged columns that run up and down on the page—

enjoy some of the highest readership. More than 69 percent of all the

briefs that appeared were read in their entirety.

We should incorporate briefs whenever possible, and give them a

prominent place on the page. Most newspapers run brief columns

vertically, usually on the outside of the page, with small, bold

headlines and type set ragged right, to distinguish them from regu-

lar text. But at The Wall Street Journal Europe, the new design calls

for brief columns to appear anywhere but on the edge, making them

a more integral part of the page.

News websites have enhanced the status of briefs. A new generation

of readers is used to scanning and scrolling up and down to get sum-

maries of stories they may eventually read in their entirety. When

those readers transfer to print, they expect the same, smooth type of

visual “scrolling.”

There remains a consistent problem with briefs, however. In many

newspapers, they are not brief enough. A brief should be what the

term implies: not more than fifteen to twenty lines in a one-column

setting. If more space is needed, then the editor should create a com-

pact story. Long briefs are unfair to the reader—and the story.

pure design

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Reaffirmation news: Readers come to their newspaper to discover whatthey don’t know or to reaffirm whatthey already heardelsewhere. Briefsrank among the most often readitems in the newspaper. Editors knowthat these short items are best uti-lized with reaffirmation news. TheWall Street Journal Europe runs briefson almost every page, complementingtext-driven pages of news.