David House, the Startlegrams' ombudsman, breaks down the newspaper's front page changes:

The last Monday front page that readers had seen was a relatively normal Star-Telegram presentation on Aug. 16 that carried 44 design elements, ranging from 11 headlines to six photographs and other bits and pieces.

But on Aug. 23, readers beheld a Page One filled with 85 design elements, including 19 headlines, 25 uses of boldface type as small headlines and in other copy, six color pictures and 17 copy blocks, all referring to 18 stories inside.

Oddly, he says, the changes have only prompted about 50 responses:

As radical a change as it was, the format mysteriously provoked only about 50 calls and e-mails, but they came from passionate newspaper readers who mostly disapproved, saying they didn't want a USA Today-type Star-Telegram or a full-page index of sections that they would read anyway.

"Are you crazy?" one reader asked.

Others complained: "Disgusting." "This makes me nuts." "Insulting." "Monday's front page looked like something from My Weekly Reader; I guess if you want 3rd through 6th grade … you're on the mark."

But another said: "Change is good. Keep it going."

Executive Editor Jim Witt asks for patience and feedback:

"We've got to find a way to serve everyone as best we can," he said. "The biggest competitor we face is not another newspaper or another medium. It's people's time and how they spend it. The No. 1 reason that people give when they cancel subscriptions is 'no time to read.' "

Witt hopes that the redesign encourages more people to spend time with the Star-Telegram and to begin reading even more of the paper than they ordinarily would.

He believes it'll take unorthodox moves to reach that point, and there's no reason why serious journalism can't drive it all. And, of course, "when a big story happens, we'll throw all this out the window and do what we need to do," he says.

Newspapers historically have feared tinkering much with their traditional product. The Monday Page One strategy would never fly at most any paper that comes to mind. It's a gutsy move, but in Witt's mind, "it's gutsy not to take such steps" if newspapers are to survive a nationwide decline in readership.

But so far, count House in the doesn't-like-it camp:

No, I didn't care for Monday's frantic, 85-element Page One and some other aspects of the redesign. As much as I enjoy exploring new ideas, the page baffled me as it baffled some readers. But there's clear value in other changes -- sharp typography, cleaner presentation on inside pages, new bits of helpful information.

What's most impressive to me is the sight of a newspaper willing to risk change to reach readers.

Maybe when the redesign is fully tweaked and figured out, we'll hear more comments like those from a retired Presbyterian minister:

"I'm so pleased with your new format. I've been dazzled and appreciative. … I know you're probably going to hear mostly from people who don't like what you've done. Church people are the same way. I'll keep you in my prayers."

>Disgusting? Gutsy? Pleasing? [Fort Worth Star Telegram]

2 Comments

And here, on the right, is the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's all-teaser Monday front (last Monday's on the left).

Editor Jim Witt, in a column yesterday, explained it thusly:

On Monday, we'll debut a Page One format designed to help you find out quickly what's going on. Our readers tell us that they don't like hunting for the end of stories that start on Page One and continue inside the section. We're experimenting with a new format that summarizes the day's most important and interesting stories on the front page, then guides you inside if you want to know more. You can read the front page in five minutes or less and be up to speed, but you'll also be able to turn inside to get the complete story, including all the details and context that you depend on the Star-Telegram to deliver.

We're working hard to ensure that at least one story on every section cover every day does not continue on an inside page.

As for design changes elsewhere, he says:

We've tried to make our pages easier on the eye by using more white space and smaller, bolder headlines. You'll see that the section names for the local section (Fort Worth, Arlington or Northeast), Business, Sports and Life|Arts -- have a new, bolder typeface and space for information about stories in upcoming editions or inside that day's section.

Here is a PDF of the front page for a closer look.

>To our readers [Fort Worth Star-Telegram]

6 Comments

The Startlegram's new one-jump Sunday A1 is on the streets of Fort Worth today. And here it is, courtesy of Star-Telegram Sunday coordinator Kate Gorman. An old Sunday cover is on the left. The new no-jump Monday A1 that had some people all a-twitter a few weeks back comes tomorrow.

Fort Worth Weekly has a long, fairly unbalanced story on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's plan to turn their Monday A1 in August into an all-promo page. This is certainly a radical move and there are interesting issues here, but the writer can't be bothered to find more than one person to offset all the doom-sayers (many of whom, it should be noted, have probably never seen prototypes). Also, the writer can't get past his snide, alt-weekly tone to go into much depth.

Maybe the Star-Telegram's head ed has been watching too many beer commercials. Tastes great? Less filling, for sure. Maybe he's copping Fort Worth Weekly's front page, which, magazine-style, plugs the articles and reviews inside. Or did the second-hand smoke from all those reefers - more journalese for a line that refers readers from one page to another - get to him?

I don't have any inside dope about the Startlegram, but I have worked at newspapers that have been written about (poorly) by the local alternative weekly. And this story fits so well into the typical alt-weekly template of The Dumbing Down Editor and His Minions vs. The Long Suffering Reporting Staff Who Just Want to Write In-Depth Stories About Important Things that it feels a bit like the story's been hammered into that shape whether it fits the facts or not.

A second group, composed largely of mid-level editorial managers and those above them, seem enthusiastically behind Witt's plan. "There are some high-ranking editors who [have] deeply bought into this and think newspapers are failing to get young readers particularly - that unless we make drastic changes, we'll be dinosaurs,'' a staffer said. "That's the message that has gone out, and a lot of people are buying into it."

Well, newspapers are "failing to get young readers particularly." Should newspapers not strive to do something about this? The writer tries to go here, quoting Kenny Irby:

"If there is a surprise, it's that there have been so many holdouts," Irby said. In his view, many news stories are too long and jumps too hard to find. "Visual journalists in the newsroom have wondered why their writing colleagues have not heeded their concerns. Not wondered, but agonized over."

But then he slaps it back into another standard knee-jerk template: The Flashy Visual Types Who Couldn't Care Less About Content vs. The Long Suffering Reporting Staff Who Just Want to Write In-Depth Stories About Important Things.

What's happening at the Star-Telegram may also be the result of an ongoing struggle in many newsrooms across the country between writers on the one hand and photographers and designers on the other. The dominance that wordsmiths enjoyed in newsrooms 20 years ago has faded as newspapers, pushed by the flashier visuals of television and the web, have given increasing prominence to photos, graphics, and other artwork.

Could it not be that an increasing emphasis on finding different ways of presenting the news than 30-inch thumbsuckers and 10-story-start front pages has actually forestalled even bigger readership losses? Could it not also be that at many newspapers it is not a "struggle"? That many "wordsmiths" realize that finding other ways to present some news opens up more real estate to devote to more important, in-depth stories?

I'm not saying the Fort Worth plan is a good idea; I don't know anything more about this than what the Fort Worth Weekly tells me. Problem is, it's not telling me very much.

*UPDATE: The Star-Telegram editor's whole memo is now at Romenesko.

On Monday, we'll really be radical in that approach - no stories out there at all (so of course no jumps!) Monday is a really hectic day, you're getting back to work after two days off, you have to get the kids off to school, you have to fix breakfast, really not much time to read. So the Monday 1A will be a full page of reefers, teases and summaries. At the bottom will be a look at the week ahead, with some suggestions for what you need to pay attention to.

The "light reader'' can read this page and know all they want to about what's going on. No need to read any further. The "serious reader'' will know exactly where to go to find what they want, and what they'll see when they get there.

Don't misunderstand - there will still be complex stories in the paper and interesting stories in the paper where we decide to write LONG. That form of writing is not going away. But I do hope we do a better job of figuring out how to decide when to do it and how to do it better (the Storytelling committee is working on that aspect).

By the way, the Fort Worth Weekly had this memo, why didn't they at least post it on their site? Would have helped readers get a fuller picture of what's going on. Maybe that didn't fit into their template.

>More sizzle, less steak [Fort Worth Weekly, via VisualEditors.com]
>Fort Worth Star-Telegram memo [Romenesko Memos]

2 Comments