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...or it may put them to sleep.

The New York Times weighed in with more than 2,000 words and The Dallas Morning News with more than 1,000. Even USA Today made room for a 300-word-plus story. The Star-Telegram did a Wal-Mart-style roll-back of its own with a bikini brief of a story that ran less than 200 words. (Even then, the Wal-Mart news ran next to a photograph of what appeared to be yet another poodle.)

"We ran six inches because we didn't jump the story. It just stopped,'' a staffer complained. "Six inches? That's all you need to know about one of the major employers in the country?''

Witt said in the memo that it's not so much what people need to know as what they have time to read. "More and more of our readers are scanners -- they spend 10 to 15 minutes with the paper,'' he wrote. "We have to find new ways to help them get the most of it in that time period (and yet not forget the 'traditional' reader who might spend an hour with the newspaper.)''

He also wrote that the Star-Telegram remains committed to "watchdog'' journalism and will continue to run long stories when warranted by the facts. "That form of writing is not going away,'' he said. "But I do hope we do a better job of figuring out how to decide when to do it and how to do it better.''

While designers will be trying to minimize jumps throughout the week, Witt said the paper will take this new philosophy "to its zenith" on Sundays, when it can be a chore to even lift the paper, and Mondays, when readers want the journalistic equivalent of a quickie. "The 'light reader' can read this page and know all that they want to about what's going on,'' he wrote. "No need to read any further. The 'serious reader' will know exactly where to go to find what they want, and what they'll see when they get there.''

The newspaper hasn't come up with a final design, but the prototypes floating around the newsroom are as busy as the lives of the readers Witt is trying to court. One prototype had as many as a dozen "little stories'' on the front page with nothing over four inches, one staffer said. "It just looks stupid,'' said another.

The longtime reader who has reviewed Witt's memo said he envisions something similar to what the Star-Telegram and The Dallas Morning News now peddle on Saturdays as a "bulldog," or early Sunday, edition -- a front page full of photographs, headlines, and blurbs that looks "like some seventh-grader put it together.'' NEXT »

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