Journal 11: The Back Page/Sports Section

This post concerns the sports page of the Irish Independent on Thursday 5 February and how the paper treated the sports stories of the day.

The main picture taking up the majority of the back page is one of Padraig Harrington, as the news of a minor procedure he had to have taken due to sun spots received while playing golf filtered through to the media. The Indo has unusually gone for a tabloid-like heading "Harrington in stitches", obviously connoting some humorous undertones to the story... of which there are none, really. In fact it is surprising that the lead story was not the 1-0 loss of Liverpool to city rivals Everton, considering the amount of support Liverpool receives in this country, and the magnitude of that story over a technically superficial one such as Harrington needing stitches (forgive the pun)... although that story is mentioned in the back page masthead.

Before I mention the other story, it would be prudent to point out that the Irish Independent has discontinued the policy of using the back page for sport as traditional tabloids do; instead including a section within the body of the paper and devoting the back page to a sort of human affairs roundup. It should be interesting to see if this actually makes an impact on readers... Personally I preferred the back pages being dedicated to sport.

The story at the BP1 part of the back pages is a "Blow for Cork as Croke Park wash hands of row", which concerns the ongoing row in the Cork hurling dispute and Croke Park officials' part in the furore. Both stories are written simply with good introductory single sentences and sticking to a single sentence per paragraph rule throughout the brief. The idea I presume is to invite the reader to buy the paper and read more in-depth articles inside, as the stories on the back page are not too detailed at all. A simple strategy that works as effectively as simple sentences work at getting information across.