Returning from a leave of nearly two weeks, I found a lot to think and write about:

A new Page 1

Stars and Stripes launched a new front-page design two weeks ago. The page looks markedly different from what had been the predominant Page 1 design. Most of the time, that one had a large headline and a large, usually unrelated photograph, as well as "teasers," or references, to articles on inside pages. The design dated from the late 1990s and was intended to grab readers’ attention.

The new design’s main differences are the inclusion of text on two featured articles, and the pairing of headlines and photographs. (In the old design, folks sometimes thought the large headline and the main photo were supposed to be related, when they were not.) The new design also works against a relatively minor story being overplayed in a big, bold headline.

All in all, I like the new page. It’s cleaner and more professional looking. It still has to find the right balance between local, staff-generated articles and national or international ones provided by news agencies. In the end, as with anything else a newspaper does, the readers will decide what they like and don’t like.

Editorial Director Terry Leonard says the new design opens a period of experimentation and innovations still to come. "I feel this look will help us keep a better balance between our headlines and stories," he said. "I also think using some of the text on the front gives the page more weight and gives the reader at least a glimpse of what is to come inside."

Where is the ‘good news’?

In a recent letter from Camp Stryker, Iraq, Sgt. Joseph S. Woodell issued a poignant plea for more "positive news" in the media. He doesn’t want "life is peachy" news, the sergeant said, just "a story that doesn’t include death, destruction or gas prices."

His complaint is understandable. There’s been a ferocious succession of natural disasters (Myanmar, China, the U.S. Midwest); Americans continue to die in Iraq and Afghanistan; high oil costs and droughts have led to high food prices and riots; the economies of the United States and other countries have been battered by the credit crisis. The list goes on.

The media would be delinquent if it didn’t fully cover these problems. At the same time, good editors know there are positive stories out there and they should be covered too. I went through a week’s worth of Stars and Stripes issues and found about two dozen. Everything from an Ohio mom who raises money for military dogs to a display of Father’s Day messages. That’s a small percentage of all the stories in the papers (not all the others were "negative"), but more than I expected. Journalists can’t create news that pleases everybody. What they can do is try to mix what an old boss of mine used to call "the good and the bad, the glad and the sad."

On earning, not winning, that medal

Staff Sgt. Michael J. Bacon from Camp Patriot, Kuwait, reminds us that "there is not a competition for the Medal of Honor. Those who receive it, earn it." Too often, he says, stories in the media, including Stars and Stripes, describe a recipient as a "winner" of the award.

Stripes staffers understand the distinction, as far as I know, and one would be hard-pressed to see the incorrect usage in a story of their own. But it shows up in news agency copy every so often, most recently in an Associated Press story earlier this month. Executive Editor Robb Grindstaff sent out a note reminding the copy desk it was the "last bastion of defense" on this "very sensitive style point" and must fix outside copy when necessary.

A picture and public relations

On May 30 Stripes published a Page 1 picture [in its Mideast and Europe editions] of a GI shaking a finger in the face of an Iraqi scrap metal dealer on whose property troops had found Humvee parts that could be used by insurgents. A letter from Lt. Cmdr. Matt Bowen, in Balad, Iraq, took Stripes to task for running the picture, arguing that any Iraqis who saw that issue would be insulted by the GI’s threatening attitude. Some people who see the paper "may not be able to read an explanatory caption," the officer wrote, "They just see the picture speaking a thousand words."

He’s right. But a newspaper loses its credibility if it starts editing with public relations, rather than a straight reporting, in mind. Those responsible for polishing the U.S. image should agree, inasmuch as the independence and objectivity of the U.S. media are, in themselves, a lot to brag about.

A picture and ‘sensitivity’

Stripes came in for criticism from a former reporter, Peggy Mason of St. Louis. Mason, who worked for the paper from 1989 to 1992, when she was known as Peggy Davidson, was upset by a front-page photo of human skulls that had been dug up at one of Saddam Hussein’s mass-killing fields in Iraq. "Have the standards of Stripes reporting deteriorated so much," she wrote in a published letter, "that you now go for the ‘sensational’ and ignore compassion?" Sensitivity used to be the rule for Stripes in her day, she said. Executive Editor Grindstaff defended the picture. "Sometimes you have to show the atrocity to get someone’s attention," he said. "Sometimes news is ugly."

I don’t know what the sensitivity rules were for Stripes in the early 1990s, but I don’t see a policy of insensitivity here now. Still, the picture, which accompanied a solid story by Striper Lisa Burgess, was more startling than anything the paper has run lately.

I think pictures in a newspaper, whenever possible, should strive to "tell a story." At first, the deathpit picture might seem to show a gruesome scene, and that’s it. Then you note that a blindfold is still attached to one of the skulls, vivid evidence of a very personal, execution-style demise. Did a small, blood-stained cloth provide enough story-telling to merit such large space on the front page? I don’t know, but for me it stirred reflection more than a simple showing of bones could have done.