Not exactly revolutionary stuff. Although having the "masthead" on the front page would be. It's called a flag, people. The masthead is what some of us so eloquently refer to as the "staff box."

Sorry, just one of my pet peeves.

Not exactly revolutionary stuff. Although having the "masthead" on the front page would be. It's called a flag, people. The masthead is what some of us so eloquently refer to as the "staff box."

Sorry, just one of my pet peeves.

Posting the same thin gtwice, however, is not one of my pet peeves. Sorry about that.

Sorry, I know this might be picky, but I'm with Jeff. This particular misnomer has bugged me for a very long time.

Bugs me, too.

What I found particularly interesting was how he put the word teases in quotes as if that weren't self-explanitory.

I don't see much of a difference between the two pages. They easily could be passed off as not being different, and I don't think many would notice they are.

Funny stuff about the masthead. I thought that was only my pet peeve. BUT, I looked either in AP stylebook or dictionary, and one of those sources says masthead now is acceptable in place of flag or nameplate

I don't care who says they are interchangeable: A masthead usually is inside and contains staff listings.

Im sorry... i just dont see enough change in there to deserve a place in your blog... what's the deal? come on, editors are so conservative that you are able to make a minor change and all of a sudden its almost a redesign?...

Well I like it. It's a nice step in a more contemporary direction, and devices like these conversational promos and more lively index do speak to time-starved readers. Why begrudge the good folks in Sacto a pat on the back? If you want to encourage change on a large scale, you have to celebrate even incremental change.

It's a freshening of elements that have been part of redesigns for years -- promos, refer lines and digests. That's always welcome, but not so urgent or revolutionary.

Here are 10 revolutionary things I'd like to see a newspaper try:

1. A three-pronged approach, with a home-delivered "traditional news for traditional people" paper that doesn't care what's been on the Web or TV, plus a street-sales, events-oriented tightly written free metro tab, plus a robust online news site where video is the main art.

2. A JOA-starved afternoon newspaper that simply gives up on paper and goes completely online.

3. A newspaper that instead of taking away the stocks, the TV listings and other newsprint-expensive items that a small number of devoted readers still demand, bundles those and charges another 50 cents for the premium package.

4. A newspaper that devotes a section to world news, with a page devoted to each hemisphere.

5. A newspaper with a true one-stop, get-caught-up-on-everything, time-saving digest column.

6. A newspaper that goes completely local, with The Christian Science Monitor inserted to provide national and world news.

7. A newspaper that redesigns in order to run more comics, and bigger comics, perhaps with a page or more for the classics and a page or more for new wave comics.

8. A newspaper that's happy and thriving with a 10 percent profit margin.

9. A newspaper that comes out in paper only on Sunday, and is online otherwise.

10. A newspaper that offers one section that each reader can mix-and-match; for instance, for one reader it might be stock listings, women's sports and news of Africa. For another it might be more health and fitness and news of the Mideast.

Jeff/Dorsey/Nicole: Wow, I must've been tired! That "masthead/flag" thing is high on my pet peeve list, too.

Alexander: Right, not much change there. That was sorta my point.

Bo: Oh, I think it's a fine step. No slight was intended. But I think too often incremental change just begets incremental change, and then we're incrementally dead. I think it's time for bigger things. That's the discussion we need to have, rather than just celebrating small victories (not that we can't do that, too). The print product is failing. Upper management (at least in my experience) is getting religion. They're more open to big, non-incremental change than ever in my 20 years in the business. Time to push for it.

The masthead/flag thing does get confused but I think the traditional name for the art on the top of the front page nameing the paper is "nameplate". "Flag", as I understand it, is the section name but they all get munged together with "banner", "cover title" and "logo".

OK, let me shed some light in the darkness here.

The excerpt on the blog is from an article in our Sunday ombudsman's column in The Bee. The terminology is that of our public editor, not me. He interviewed me and a few others in our newsroom about the changes. He put "teases" in quotes because he was writing for a general newspaper audience, not designers on a blog. Most readers don't know what "teases" are.

But really, masthead vs. flag...who cares? On news desks, there are usually half a dozen words to describe the same thing. In my experience, just depends on the particular newsroom.

As for the "nothing revolutionary" criticism. I work for editors and a publisher who wanted to respond to falling circulation ASAP. A thorough redesign takes a lot of time, effort and money, as anyone who's been through one should realize. The process of putting these changes in place took perhaps two months. They were not intended to be a comprehensive redesign, just a quick adjustment.

As for revolutionary change...most of the ones I've seen in the past few years have created buzz on design blogs, but done little or nothing to turn around the decline of newspapers. My own view: Design alone can't do it, or the Washington Star and Boca Raton News would still be with us. We have to figure out the online business model, the competing demands for attention and how to deliver unique, compelling, local content with slashed budgets.

As for major redesign, that's on the boards for 2008 here with a move to 48-inch web. That process is just about to begin and yes, new fonts and more radical approaches will be on the table.

Hi Bonita! Thanks for the comment. Autumn says hi and she's doing GREAT!
casey

Not much of a departure to me. Also, what's up with the stubby descenders in the headline face? I understand trying to save space, but jeez!

Our paper often does 'tweaking' in an effort to draw in more readers. I'm not sure that any of it has worked. Our A1 refers have changed several times in the six years that I've been hear. I think the Bee's new refers are easy to follow.

Boy, I must say, if I hear about "navigating" in newspapers one more time, I might very well scream.

Let's be honest ... did people ever really have a problem picking up the paper and finding the section they wanted? A tease by any name and shape is a tease, a refer ... a "point of entry," and now, an element of "navigation." These aren't Web sites, these are newspapers. Promote a couple of interesting stories, as we've ALWAYS done, and call it a day. Let's not belabor that most basic of newspaper food groups and build it into something more than it is. By doing so, we waste valuable time and staff energy that could be spent finding honest-to-goodness NEW solutions to contemporary communication issues.

Any "revolution" in newspapers is yet to happen. Tweaking a couple of fonts and a couple of shapes, all the way up to the mini "L" of the Baltimore Sun and the mega "L" of Bakersfield, don't a revolution make. Remember all those cool all-refer Sunday fronts in Pittsburgh and Dallas and Seattle and even little ol' Bridgeport, Conn.? They come and go. Meanwhile, a paper like the N.Y. Post 1) knows its audience, 2) gives it a tab, and 3) maintains a consistent tone in its visual and verbal content. I dare say the damn thing is my favorite paper these days because it knows exactly what it has to do and does it extraordinarily well and consistently. Remember when you'd balk at the racy tabs in your 20s? Well, look at 'em now with more informed eyes. That "tab" revolution totally missed the boat ... it's not just the shape, it's the attitude, the whole package, cover to cover.

And the top however-many-stories-you-NEED-to-know-about ... remember when we were all reading about the Strib's "experience" paper at www.readership.org ... and then the Pioneer-Press came out and did it better? It's scarcely a different tactic than the big blowout 2A digests, just migrated to the front page and treated a little differently. Again, how dare we pass this off as "revolution"?

A folo-up:

1. To echo what another poster stated, I don't wish to pile on the SacBee exclusively, either.

2. Wanna get the revolution rolling? STOP DOING THESE $(*)&*(*(*&&)E "anniversary" stories ... D-Day, Pearl Harbor, JFK, 9/11, OKC, etc. etc. etc. Wastes of space, all. Waste of staff time and energy ... mere padding on the story budget ... "Oh, and here's where we put this anniversary, and that anniversary." Find REAL stories. For 9/11 ... how about a stand-alone photo, at the bottom of a page, or as a 1A centerpiece, or better yet, as a Sunday perspective centerpiece ... with a simple by-the-numbers look at the anti-terror & security trends globally and in the U.S. in the past five years ... number of square feet of retail/commercial space added in lower Manhattan, number of terror attacks thwarted, number of agents in the field, number of new regulations, number of passenger checks ... ANYTHING quick and useful. The rest of it? Why not at four years, or six years? G