“JUMP!” is a great late-night deadline song by Van Halen, but also a commonly used technique in magazines and newspapers. Jump coverage makes your readers turn the page (or multiple pages)
- From Organizations, a story on Key Club jumps to the Senior section, highlighting graduates at the Key Club banquet
- A student life story about the school’s first dance could send readers to the 6th Grade spread with poll results on how many attended the dance
- Cover individual sports that students play outside of school hours and then link those captions to the same students on their mug page
Jump coverage, while commonly used in magazines and newspapers, is showing up more often in yearbooks. This is when a story continues on a second page, forcing the reader to jump to another location—either the very next page or sometimes an entirely different section of the book. Jump coverage works best when the book’s theme sets up the situation, like “There’s More to the Story” and “From Here to There.”
We see this used a lot with an extended opening, but don’t just stop with the obvious. Using jump coverage, a story on Key Club can jump to the Senior section, highlighting graduates at the Key Club banquet. A student life story about the school’s first dance, could send readers to the 6th Grade spread with poll results on how many attended the dance.
Of course jump coverage requires good planning because it’s only successful when you give the page number for the follow-up story. Also, don’t pass up opportunities to link your main story to a sidebar on a different location—anything that keeps your students turning those pages!
*This entry is part of “The Yearbook Ladies’ A to Zs of Yearbook”
project. If you’d like to download the “J” card, go to the “Adviser
Resources” section of www.theyearbookladies.com
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