Random thoughts on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

I just read a fantastic editorial that was on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Web site about a dad who is starting to deal with his daughter becoming a teenager. It is well-written, funny and best of all, while it is a topic that has been done so many times before, the author brought his own voice to the story and made me want to keep reading.

I love how instead of using her real name, he used a fake name. But he didn't just use a random girl's name - he chose the name Gustavo. He clearly pokes fun at a journalist's tendency to use fake names in a hilarious way while still keeping his daughter unnamed, giving her some protection.

He also was able to take simple concepts about a teenage girl and write about them in creative, entertaining ways. For instance, instead of simply saying that his daughter loved to have her picture taken he said, "Gustavo normally never met a camera she wasn’t in the mood to mug for. About the only time she’d refused to smile for a camera in the past was when she was actively vomiting or asleep with her mouth open."

That wasn't the only clever thing that he wrote, and I did not want to stop reading. But his writing style wasn't the only thing that made me keep reading.

I love how the Post-Dispatch did not make me click on a "next page" button to keep reading the article. I absolutely hate doing that, and would much rather scroll down to read a story. I don't understand why papers use that format because I learned in my graphics class that people are less likely to keep reading if they can't scroll down to see the rest of the words. I also learned that there usually isn't a spatial reason that these papers can't have the text continue on the same page.

I really think that online newspapers would have a more readers if they kept all of the words on the same page. So if I'm ever involved in the web design of a paper, I would suggest that readers have the ability to scroll down.

To see the article: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/lifestyle/columnists.nsf