Jumps are beneficial to both readers and advertisers

I hope this column doesn’t jump to another page.
It’s very likely it will, though, as our pages just aren’t big enough to contain all the information we at The Gazette like to tell you.
And judging by some of the comments we receive, you’ve definitely noticed our pages aren’t big enough.
“I love your paper, but my only complaint is you have to jump from page to page to read the entire story.”
“Too many jumps.”
“Why don’t you put everything on one page?”
Those are the comments we sometime receive about what we call “jumps” simply because if we can’t fit a story in a given space on a page, we jump it to another page.
Ideally, an 11-inch by 18-inch page should contain enough room for any story, even if it has a picture or two. But by the time ads are placed on a page, as well as small stories and photos that are equally as important as the large stories, the space we have to work with is greatly reduced.
Now, in a perfect newspaper world – which by the way doesn’t exist – we’d have perfect-fitting holes for perfect-fitting stories and jumps wouldn’t be necessary. Unfortunately, it never works that way. The stories are usually too long, or too short, for a given hole, and as a result long stories jump to another page and short stories create a hole that needs to be filled by a jump from another page.
Our layout guy, Brett Hiorns, can fudge with the leading, photo and headline sizes to sometimes fit a story, but his time is limited and quickness is preferred Wednesday night when we’re readying the paper. The printer gets an itch for PDF files at midnight, so it can have the paper ready in the early morning hours on Thursday in order to get it mailed to people by Friday.
As a result, jumps are the norm with The Gazette. And that’s not a bad thing, despite the anti-jump comments we receive.
Why? Prior to the corporatization of many newspapers, jumps were the norm with most newspapers, and for good reason. Because of jumps, the entire story could be told; they weren’t written, or edited, to fit a space. When I read other newspapers, I often think I’m not getting the whole story and that key details are being left out or it’s been written in such a way I only get the bare-bone basics.
At The Gazette, the writers here write until they run out of information to write about. Personally speaking, if I attend an emotional School Board meeting like the one I went to in April following the defeat of the second referendum, and it lasts more than four hours, I’ll take a lot of notes. While I don’t have the time to write about every word that is spoken at the meeting, I’ll make sure my story grabs at the heart of events that transpired at it in order to keep those who were not there informed.
I believe all of our writers – Gene, John, George (a Ringo or Paul would fit nicely here), Jim, Justin, Nick, Bill and all of our contributors – follow this philosophy. They tell the story as it should be told, albeit with a jump or two.
In addition to helping to keep readers better informed, jumps also benefit our advertisers. Because of them, people often look at one page multiple times. Multiple views mean a better chance people will notice any given ad, and since studies have proven people often need to see something three or more times to remember it, an advertiser on a page with jumps should be grateful for such placement.
I understand why people don’t like jumps, though. They can be annoying, especially since we don’t have three hands to navigate them. But, because they help better inform readers, our brains will get bigger, and then through evolution we may be able to grow that third hand.