The column with nothing in it

Text: an original contemporary media-commentary-style practice extract.

The redesigned front page produced complaints before lunchtime. Where the newspaper had previously squeezed six headlines, a weather box and two photographs above the fold, the new edition carried one main report, two shorter items and an uninterrupted strip of white around the title. One reader asked whether a column had failed to print. Another offered to send in enough news to fill it.

In the newsroom, the old and new pages were pinned beside each other. On the old version, a correction to the bus timetable sat between a shop advert and a photograph of a prize-winning marrow. Its heading competed with seven others. On the new page, a correction occupied three plain lines beneath the main report. Nothing pointed towards it or boxed it in, yet it was the first item several visitors noticed. The unprinted paper separated information that did not belong together and gave the smaller notice a prominence that extra decoration might have removed.

There was a cost. A report about the youth theatre had been moved to page seven, and its organiser argued that the front page tells readers what a newspaper considers important. The editor did not dismiss this objection. Instead, she introduced a question at the final proof meeting: what useful work is each empty area doing? In the following edition, the white strip became narrower so that an election date could be added, but the clear margin around the correction remained.

The newspaper kept the redesign. Its blank paper was neither an accident nor a claim that fewer stories always make a better edition. It had to earn its place by making the remaining information easier to distinguish. The space was treated as carefully as the words.

In this extract, the writer tries to show that leaving part of a newspaper page empty can be a purposeful editorial decision.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.