The Jewish Chronicle has come up with an interesting innovation. From this week it will be running its leading articles on the back page.
Its editor, Stephen Pollard, thinks this may be a first. In an explanatory editorial, “Back to front”, he writes:
“We are unaware of any newspaper that has done this. But then, most are not Jewish newspapers.
And as well as giving more prominence to the leaders, we wanted to offer a nod to Hebrew, with the back - or, in this context, perhaps, front - page offering something as heavyweight as the main news story.”
I think it’s a rather good idea whether you read from right to left or the reverse. So well done to Pollard for his counter-intuitive move.
The placement of the leader page in any newspaper often exercises editors. You may recall that the former Times editor, James Harding, decided to put the leading articles on page 2, a decision reversed by his successor, John Witherow.
It is not, of course, a problem Harding faces in his current role as head of news at the BBC.
