Words aren’t enough. Good stories aren’t enough. Facts aren’t enough.

“It’s just ugly,” said Susanna Leonard from Hoover High School in Fresno, Calif. “My kids are great, but my newspaper looks bad.”

The qualities that used to captivate the audience of newspaper readers just don’t work in today’s society. With the overabundance of news outlets, newspapers fight to keep an audience and the design of the newspaper is just as important as the story on the front page.

Tracy Collins, senior director of operations at The Arizona Republic, led the Reynolds Institute participants through the dos and don’ts of designing a high school paper. Collins spent four hours discussing good and bad newspaper design and got some laughs from the 33 journalism advisers at the Institute by throwing candy and playing a slide show that included movie clips and B.B. King music. He also imparted knowledge to these high school teachers that they could bring back to their students to prepare them for what they’ll face in a visually-stimulated society.

Jay Kirby from Chelsea High School in Boston doesn’t understand why newspapers have to get a whole new look.

“I don’t like the notion that good design requires lots of eye candy. To me the most important aspects are good writing and compelling photos,” Kirby said.

In order for the participants to see how design had changed, Collins displayed newspapers from years as early as 1750 all the way to 1989. The last one he showed was a personal example of what he was once slapping on the front page.

“When I turned pro, I too could do pages that sucked with the best of them,” Collins said.

The participants chuckled and settled in for Collins’ next comment, “You have to recognize what sucks, understand why it sucks, and understand how to make it less sucky.”

It wasn’t until USA Today came along in 1982, with its colorful front page and almost magazine-like attraction, that other newspapers followed suit.

“Until then, there was no motivation to hire people who were good at design,” Collins said.

The need for good design and color photography also created a need for graphic designers and specialized photographers who could provide just that. But, in the days of the point and shoot camera, specialized photographers aren’t in demand. Collins said designers still are.

Collins introduced the design that newspapers used to use when laying out a page. Dogleg designs are L-shaped columns of text that wrap around art, ads or other stories. He said that they were very hard to follow and they led the reader through stories in an almost unorganized fashion. When Collins graduated from college, doglegs were still the way to go.

After a couple of years in the business though, he realized that doglegs were hard to follow and the industry started getting new ideas. Newspapers began to design their pages in modules, which meant that there was nothing on the page that couldn’t fit in a rectangle.

Cedric Ranchez from Kaimuki High School in Honolulu says he just realized what design his paper used.

“I think our newspaper has a problem with doglegs. This is something I just learned today,” Ranchez said.

Collins suggested that when there are modules on a page, the designing not only becomes easier to do, but easier to look at as well.

Alistair Bomphray from Tennyson High School in Hayward, Calif, admitted that he has never been that critical of newspaper design.

“I've always been the unthinking consumer of newspapers. If something bothered me about a page's design, I probably just turned the page without asking questions,” Bomphray said.

Collins used many examples from The Arizona Republic to show ideas that worked well and also ideas that didn’t work so well.

“I can show you no better way of what not to do than to show you The Arizona Republic, only because I work there,” he said.

Participants learned that there should always be a center of focus and the stories should follow a hierarchy so the readers know the order in which to read.

After a short bathroom break and a chance to grab some candy, the group learned how they could “become the B.B. King of Type.”

Collins compared type to playing the blues.

“Blues and type are equal-opportunity arts,” he said. “It seems simple, but doing it well is hard.”

Collins weaved in clips from a live B.B. King performance to set the mood. Every word signified the emotions attached to someone when selecting the right size, space and style of each front page headline. The clips also served another purpose within his presentation.

“B.B. is also there to let me drink some water,” he joked.

Issues of newspapers from all over the country filled slide after slide. Participants saw how different papers covered major events, such as Hurricane Katrina, and they evaluated the type and size of the fonts used for each headline.

Collins showed the group a trick for evaluating whether or not their headlines are big enough. He told them to hold the paper about four feet away and squint. If it doesn’t pop out, it’s not big enough, he said.

He also demonstrated why using the kern tool, which adjusts the space between each letter, is a necessity for every headline.

“The standard way a font comes with a program is not good enough,” Collins said.

After the front page is planned out, the inside of the paper still awaits a design. Collins had examples of artsy designs from recent issues of The Arizona Republic to show that designers are adding more art to the feature sections of the paper.

Some participants questioned whether that was the right thing to do.

“I wonder if people will look at the art and not the story,” said Donald Parker from O. Perry Walker High School in New Orleans.

Collins stressed that most people get information in the captions of these pieces, so they still need to be well-written.

“I feel that part of my job is to make people stop and read,” he said.

He also said that there is hardly an idea that is an original idea. One thing he suggests students do is to take magazines that they love and turn them into a newspaper.

After the presentation, Collins let the group critique pages designed by the participants’ staffs and suggested what could have been better. And some had a couple of suggestions.

“I wish he would have spent more time talking about the papers we submitted,” said Tom Hayes from Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis. “And also played more B.B. King.”