Creative Use of White Space in Sports ... Discuss

Readers who picked up Thursday’s print edition and turned to the Sports section could be forgiven if they did a double-take or choked on their morning coffee. For what they saw on the front page of the section was … well, nothing. Or actually, almost nothing: The page was more than three-quarters blank, topped with a headline, in most editions, that read “And the Inductees Are …”

The design decision memorably recognized what many knew was coming, that the Baseball Hall of Fame voters, in the wake of the steroids scandal, would induct no living players into Cooperstown this year.

Reaction came quickly from the media world, and it was largely positive. The sports blogger Ed Sherman wrote that it shows how design can be a “profoundly powerful tool.” Dana O’Neil of ESPN called it “exceptional.”

Some Times readers begged to differ. Steve Singer of Austin, Tex., wrote to me to register his objections:

I’m a longtime subscriber to the national edition … the subscription isn’t cheap but it’s fair. I enjoy it and want to support the paper. I usually ease into the day by reading the Sports page first. Sports Thursday on Page B11 was 90 percent white space. I get it, there were no Hall of Fame nominees this year. But the news hole is small enough. I’m paying for news, not white space. a cutesy design idea gone wrong. and it’s happened before. Please be more judicious when doling out precious news space. Isn’t there an editor who thinks about stuff like this

In fact, there is such an editor. I chatted on Thursday morning with Joe Sexton, the sports editor, who approved the design idea this week. It came from Wayne Kamidoi, the lead sports page designer, and Jay Schreiber, an assistant sports editor in charge of baseball coverage.

“Tyler Kepner had written as early as the weekend that this was likely, so that’s when people’s brains started firing - or misfiring,” Mr. Sexton said.

Mr. Sexton said he liked the idea - the creation of “a striking, profound emptiness” â€" from the start, noting that “white space is the most undervalued thing” in news presentation. The concept was not entirely dissimilar to his section’s treatment in December 2011 of the hockey player Derek Boogaard’s brain in the presentation of the series, “Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer,” in which, for example, a small, striking image of Mr. Boogaard’s brain was the only content above the fold in a sea of white space.

“The job of a newspaper is to capture a moment - small, large, historic, otherwise - and you can do that creatively and surprisingly,” Mr. Sexton said. “I don’t view it as wasted space but as an effective use of the printed newspaper for conveying the significance of the day’s events.” (Mr. Sexton fielded some good-natured tough hops from friends, he told me, like this one from Martin Gottlieb, a former Timesman who is the editor of The Record in New Jersey: “Your most finely edited piece.”)

The best commentary I saw came from Josh Crutchmer, who blogs about sports design at the Society of News Design. He offered a critique, in the form of pros and cons, including the observation it “looks like a mistake.”

The page was certainly a conversation starter. And that conversation - not only about baseball, but also about design and the power of the printed page â€" is worth having.