Update:

I'm in Syracuse assisting with the judging of the Society for News Design’s Best of Newspaper Design competition through Monday. There’s comprehensive live blog coverage, as well as Twittering and Flickring.

The Chicago Tribune launched its long-awaited redesign today. A bunch more pages after the jump.

The SND site has a look into the project in slideshow and video form, and Poynter has a Q&A with Design Director Jonathon Berlin.

There’s Chicago reaction to the redesign from design consultant Ron Reason, and public radio station WBEZ talked with Northwestern’s Jeremy Gilbert and E&P’s Mark Fitzgerald. Chicago blogs Chicagoist and Gapers Block solicited comments from their readers.

And Visual Editors’ Robb Montgomery took his camera out on the streets of suburban Chicago to find out what readers think.

In other redesign news, Mario Garcia redesigned The Oklahoman and the Hartford Courant relaunched with a new design yesterday.

Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday night. Here’s how it played on America’s front pages on Friday morning.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel launched its redesign today. Charles Apple’s got every detail you’ll ever want to know.

And over at SportsJournalists.com, everyone’s got an opinion.

The Orlando Sentinel debuted its redesign this morning. Charles Apple’s got images and thoughts.

The Wall Street Journal weighs in with a piece in Monday’s edition. (Tip: if you’re not a WSJ subscriber, go through Digg).

Past experience shows newspaper makeovers don’t necessarily translate into financial success. After the Bakersfield Californian underwent a drastic redesign two years ago, the 60,000-circulation paper in California’s Central Valley saw a small initial jolt to circulation and revenue, sparked by the brighter look and expanded coverage of hot topics like immigration. But the gains have been erased as the area economy struggles. Bakersfield Californian Chief Executive Richard Beene says the steps were necessary to keep the paper relevant, but he has advice for others considering a similar redesign: “Don’t expect it to turn around circulation or revenue overnight. It’s not a magic bullet.”

Consultant Alan Jacobson launched a broadside against the redesign Friday, saying it needed to “concentrate on content rather than cosmetics.”

In these troubled times for newspapers, it’s important to note that “readership” and “revenue” are conspicuous by their absence from virtually all the words that have been published about Orlando’s redesign. Instead, much has been made of the cosmetic changes to come.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a redesign if somebody didn’t compare it to USA Today.

Update: And Mario Garcia writes about the black reverse nameplate.

The Chicago Tribune will launch a redesign in mid-September, Editor Ann Marie Lipinski told the staff today.

"We are committed to determining the basic architecture and sectioning of the paper within 30 days; deciding on paging (how many and where) within 45 days; understanding our staffing levels throughout the paper in 60 days; and being ready to launch a rethought and redesigned Tribune within 90 days in mid-September."

Romenesko’s got the full memo.

Charles Apple has the definitive post on the upcoming Orlando redesign, including a Q&A with Bo Burton, images, the works. So go there.

Newspaper design legend Mario Garcia has entered the world of blog. It’s “about storytelling, design, the projects we work on, the things we learn along the way.”

OK, here’s a passel of additional before-and-after Orlando prototype pages for the upcoming redesign, again thanks to Bo Burton. More pages after the jump.

Kevin Wendt, assistant managing editor for Sports, the Copy and Design desks at the San Jose Mercury News, is leaving the paper to become the editor of The Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala.

Wendt, 30, has filled numerous roles at the Merc, from Page One designer to assistant business editor, and spent two weeks helping the Sun Herald, a Knight-Ridder sister paper in Biloxi, Miss., with its Hurricane Katrina coverage, which won a Public Service Pulitzer. (Wendt was kind enough to share his Sun Herald experiences with this blog back in 2005.)

Good news for Kevin, but it’s another big loss for the Merc, which has seen a steady stream of talented folks leave in the past few years.

» Merc memo

» Huntsville Times memo

So the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Tackett blogs today:

Just yesterday, according to the most reliable records on the subject, the death toll for U.S. forces in Iraq hit 4,000. The number was known quickly, the name of the fallen was not.

In very few places was the number even front page news in a war now five years old.

Among those “very few places” with a mention of the Iraq death toll on the front page: USA Today, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, Newark Star-Ledger, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Oregonian, San Diego Union-Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Kansas City Star, Indianapolis Star, San Jose Mercury News, Baltimore Sun, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Columbus Dispatch, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, San Antonio Express-News, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Charlotte Observer, Seattle Times, Tampa Tribune, Louisville Courier-Journal, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Cincinnati Enquirer and the Hartford Courant. As well as dozens of smaller papers.

Research! It’s what’s for dinner.

Michael Bazeley, who worked at the San Jose Mercury News for 11 years, writes (prematurely, it is hoped) the paper’s obituary.

Managers from parent company Media News will continue to downsize the editorial staff until it’s down to several dozen people. (It’s at about 200 FTEs now, and will be 170 after Friday. New publisher Mac Tully has told the staff that downsizing could continue for the next 18-24 months.) They’ll consolidate the copy and design desks with their other Bay Area papers. They’ll work aggressively to get rid of union representation so they can bring salaries and benefits down to the substandard wages they are paying at their non-union papers. That will drive away whatever senior reporters are left, except those who are close to retirement (most of them are gone already) or who cannot find work elsewhere. And it will turn the paper into a waystation for young reporters looking to hone their skills and pad their resumes until something better comes along (being a mid-tier paper, that was already the case to some degree). The quality of the product will suffer.

Also, Ryan Sholin's advice: "So change. Or die."

Incidentally, the Merc reported today that enough employees took buyouts to avert layoffs.

Update: As Ashley points out, that story, though posted on the Merc's site, was from the Contra Costa Times and actually referred to other Bay Area publications owned by Media News Group. The Merc today laid off 15 in the newsroom and 19 from other departments.

» RIP Mercury News [Media Grunt: Michael Bazeley]

Wow. Matt Mansfield, deputy managing editor and business development director at the San Jose Mercury News, is leaving the paper.

It’s also one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. Without question, I love the Merc: the work, the people, the place.

Leaving here will be a heartbreaking end to an amazing ride and, yet, the time feels right to exit. The buyout seemed an appropriate moment to hit the reset button.

I must admit to being more than a little sad right now, but I think that’s just because I’m nostalgic for a time that was, ultimately, unsustainable. That’s the difficult truth for many of us in newspapers right now.

What amazes me, looking back on it, is how much of myself has become tied up in my Merc personality. I’m humbled by the work we have been able to do here. And I’m genuinely indebted to my colleagues — present and past — who have worked tirelessly to make the Merc smart, successful and daring. They made me look good every day.

At our best, I hope we were able to set a pretty high benchmark.

He says he's not quite sure what's next yet, other than finishing up some redesign work for the Merc and doing some consulting and traveling.

Matt's been a good friend of this blog over the years. Good luck, Matt! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

» He’s leaving the Merc: Matt Mansfield to exit [SND Update]

Saturday was the Albuquerque Tribune’s last day. E.W. Scripps Co. determined the market could no longer support an afternoon paper and couldn’t find a buyer. The paper’s circulation in January had dwindled to 9,600 from 42,000 in the late ’80s.

The Trib long had a fine reputation as a visual paper. Here’s a slideshow with photos and words from Tribune photographers and editors. Go poke around the Trib’s site and read the remembrances, some of which I’ve linked below.

Incidentally, the guy at right in the 1994 page above is Tribune Managing Editor Neal Pattison, now executive editor at The Herald in Everett, Wash., and a former president of the Society for News Design. (And, full disclosure, the guy on the left is Tribune City Editor Michael Arrieta-Walden, who is now my boss.)

» Mike Davis: We set out to challenge readers and ourselves with the best pictures possible [Albuquerque Tribune]

» Mark Holm: Our photos hold up a mirror to the world and share the responsibility of reporting the news [Albuquerque Tribune]

» Eileen Welsome, Albuquerque Tribune made history with ‘The Plutonium Experiment’ [Albuquerque Tribune]

» Neal Pattison: Take a piece of my heart [Everett Herald]

The Society for News Design has announced the “World’s Best-Designed Newspapers.” They are:

• Akzia in Moscow, daily, circulation 200,000
• Expresso in Paco de Arcos, Portugal, daily, circulation 140,000
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Frankfurt, Germany, weekly, circulation 320,000
• The Guardian in London, daily, circulation 355,750.

More details, videos, etc., here.

Also, the full database of all SND winners is now online. Update: Well, I guess it's not anymore. Tomorrow, they say. Update2: It's up now!

io9 has a roundup of sci-fi newspapers, including the one above from “Ultraviolet” about a Vampire Epidemic!!! Too bad most Hollywood movies can’t get their prop newspapers even close to looking right.

The Chicago Tribune, following the industry trend, debuts a narrower page Monday. They're taking the opportunity to make a few design changes, not the least of which is to change the Page One nameplate. It's been reversed out of a blue field for the last 25 years, but no longer. Joe Knowles, the Trib's AME for design and graphics tells the SND Update blog that "it had become overpowering in a way. It was a difficult visual element to overcome on the page. The new one lets the content come forward." The nameplate was redrawn by Jim Parkinson.

They're also making some typographic tweaks and some other minor changes. Details here.

>Goodbye blue at the Chicago Tribune [SND Update]

Newspapers & Technology reports that The Miami Herald is planning to outsource "some of its copy editing and page layout design work to Mindworks, a prepress production firm based in New Delhi, India." The company will oversee a weekly section of Broward County community news and other specialty advertising sections.

Wow. First I've heard of actual editorial design work being outsourced.

Update: I had previously linked to E&P, but it appears the report initiated with News & Tech, so I've changed the link. Thanks, Chuck!

Update 2:Robb points out this was an AP story on Dec. 27, noted, with the Herald memo, on Visual Editors. Hmm, trying to drop the bad news turd unnoticed in the middle of a holiday week. Where would a newspaper editor learn such a thing?

I've put together the front pages of today's top U.S. papers plus several Iowa papers for your presidential campaign enjoyment. And remember, Mike Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution, only that there's a list of animals that Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

I’ve collected some front pages on the Benazir Bhutto assassination, in international and U.S. flavors.

Word came yesterday that Michael Whitley has been named Assistant Managing Editor for Design at the L.A. Times. Here’s a look back at the work Michael and his staff did during the fires in October.

When’s the last time your front page nabbed a thief?

The Washington Post debuted a new Style & Arts section on Aug. 26. It’s a merger of two regular Sunday sections.

Deputy Assistant Managing Editor for News Art Denny Brack and Style Design Director Martha Wright created the new design. Martha says:

Changes include enhanced Web keys, better use of color positions, more air on inside pages and the front, and frameless photos. Content is organized under Sounds (music), Stages (theater and dance), Screens (movies, TV, Internet) and Sights (the visual Arts). We've added Robin Givhan as a Sunday columnist, and created a Conversations page, anchored by a regular Q&A. There's also a Studio page, where local artists can explain their pieces in their own words. We'll have a doubletruck each week to showcase the work of staff photographers or take a closer look at other topics that demand that size and scope (normally it'd stand alone — happened to be a jump for our debut issue).

More pages after the jump:

Khoi Vinh, design director of nytimes.com (and SND Boston speaker) has a brilliant post that distills a lot of the thoughts about print designers and the web that have been banging around my skull for months. It's a must-read.

The prerequisite for doing something meaningful with any of these skills — HTML, CSS, Flash or whatever — is first embracing the medium as something different from print. Indeed, there's no point in learning these skills unless as a print designer you've made a prior shift in your understanding of how design works in digital media. Specifically, come to grips with the fact that, on the Web, design is not a method for implementing narrative, as it is in print, but rather it's a method for making behaviors possible.

More often than not, the reflexive approach that I've seen print designers take on the Web is to treat it as a vehicle for print-based design practices: fixing type sizes, specifying typefaces, ignoring usability and expediency, and perhaps most notoriously making the assumption that, over time, users will come around to a print-focused way of consuming content.

In my experience, none of those tactics work. Their all-around ill-suitedness tends to boil over to frustration when print designers realize that, by and large, there's little room for visual virtuosity online. Which is to say, the Web is not commonly an effective tool for highly expressive displays of typographic, photographic or illustrative skill. Looking for opportunities to execute the sort of improvisational and dramatic creative visions that we see in printed periodicals, for instance, is likely to be an exercise in disappointment.

>This Way to the Web, Print Designers! [Subtraction.com]

New York tabloid minds sure seem to be thinking alike these days.

June 20

July 22

Aug. 2

Aug. 4

Aug. 5

Aug. 9

The Associated Press noted over the weekend that New Zealand newspaper publisher APN News & Media has started outsourcing copy editing and layout work at some of its newspapers, including the New Zealand Herald, the country’s largest daily.

Starting Sunday, 20 full-time sub-editors at contractor Pagemasters New Zealand will be “operating on an extension of APN’s ‘Cyber’ computer editorial production system” at a site 20 minutes from the paper’s editorial offices, [APN deputy chief executive Rick] Neville said.

By the end of 2007, Pagemasters will have about 45 editing staff at their site to edit the seven newspapers — nearly 30 fewer than the newspapers employed for the job.

Still, this is an order of magnitude different than contracting out the TV book or using the occasional wire-service-provided layout. And hardly seems likely to improve more than the short-term bottom line.

“I’m confident readers won’t notice the difference,” said Neville, who has led the project.

The New York Times looks a bit more svelte today, rolling out its new 12" width, a 1½-inch reduction in width that brings the Times in line with most American broadsheets.

If you don't happen to have copies of the last two days' Timeses to compare, here's a goofy little animated GIF I cooked up that may give you some idea.

Here are the front pages of the two Twin Cities papers today.

Good, prominent reefers to online coverage in the Strib and Pioneer Press. Even though that's sort of a sad admission that "yeah, this information you're reading is out of date." I like how the Strib sends you to a dedicated bridge coverage page that's got everything in one spot (and, interestingly, no ads).

Also, front pages from the Top 50 circ US dailies are here.

Looks like ads may be coming to the front page of the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Observed says. In a memo to the staff, publisher David Hiller said the paper had “one of the worst quarters ever experienced,” and that the newspaper faces more competition for advertisers and is looking at “expanding the types and positioning of advertising.”

Here’s what Hiller said about the ads:

There has been a lot of focus on such ads, and I know there a real mix of views and emotions on this subject, so let me tell you what I think of them:

• Front page ads will raise several million dollars in revenue, and make a meaningful contribution to improving current trends
• We will make sure the revenue is additive, and not just switched from other pages
• They will help pay for the content we create for readers, and for our investment in new growth opportunities
• They are common at reputable papers across the U.S. and Europe, including in the Wall Street Journal’s much admired re-design
• Space taken (1 ½” strip) and related design issues can be managed
• We will have standards to ensure the ads look good, not schlocky
• If we communicate well, reader reaction should be OK

Something to remember next time you're whining about the A/C in the office not keeping you quite cool enough: Richard Turley, art director of The Guardian's G2 magazine, has an excellent piece at Design Observer about putting together the section smack in the middle of the mud-filled Glastonbury rock festival last month.

It might have been repeatedly falling over in the mud. It might have been being lost and insignificant in the ocean of people of all ages, denominations, races, classes. It might very well have been the cider. Whatever or whenever it was, there was no other decision to be made. We were going off the grid. We were going off the grid in a big way.

Well, in truth, we were off the grid way before anyway. Designing 20-odd pages of a newspaper supplement from the middle of a field was already a challenge to technology, patience and the normal processes of producing G2. Usually, and quite rightly, newspaper design is bound by the conventions of its production and structure, by the fast turnaround of ideas that precludes against overtly expressive design, and by the formal traditions, craft and Victorian ideologies of the newspaper. News designers live very much on the grid, working from templates, tied by the rules of preassigned headline, text, caption sizes, precise spacing. It is an exacting, dictatorial, inherently rigid view of the world of design. The grid is the imperious king, with whom you do not mess.

(Thanks, Michael and Richard!)

This is just the most awesomest thing ever. Scott Walker, an assistant managing editor at the Birmingham News, has hacked together an old newspaper box, a Mac Mini, and a flat screen monitor to create a digital newsstand that will grab pages from the internet and display them in the rack. Brilliant!

The Toronto Star redesigned a couple weeks ago. (OK, three. Or so.) SND's Canada blog had some (more timely) coverage here and here. There's a new body face, Torstar Text, which is set at 10.25 on 11, as opposed to the old 9.9 on 10. The paper also will be gradually shrinking to a width of 11.5 inches between August and October. There's an online reader's guide here.

Antonia Zerbisias, the Star's media columnist, solicited some expert opinion about the redesign, including Lucie Lacava ("... less distinctive, more generic. Perhaps 'generic' is too harsh. It's been simplified a lot.") and Tony Sutton (Style: "very, very readable". Content: "... it looks like it's got less news in it.")

Here are some before-and-afters (afters on the right) with thanks to Assistant Managing Editor, Design Charlie Kopun:

More pages after the jump:

Here are some before-and-afters (afters on the right) of the Virginian-Pilot’s new design.

And here are some new inside pages:

The Star-Telegram of Fort Worth launched a redesign on Sunday. They’ve narrowed the web width and turned Page One into a billboard for the rest of the paper.

In the four-page reader’s guide (PDF), Executive Editor Jim Witt writes:

You also need us to respect your busy life. Our quick-read formats will help you zero in on the information important to you, to speed you on your way. We think they also bring a jolt of energy and innovation to the paper.

This seems to be, in some ways, and extension of the paper’s 2004 redesign when the Sunday and Monday front pages became more teaser-oriented.

You can see what readers are saying about the changes here.

Here are some pages from the Sunday and Monday papers:

The Globe and Mail, “Canada's National Newspaper,” (329,923 daily/416,584 Saturday) launched a redesigned newspaper today, the culmination of a two-year “reimagination” process. Says Editor-in-Chief Edward Greenspon:

We wanted to be smarter, more accessible, more Web-paper integrated and more visually oriented.

Oh yes. And we didn’t want to give up an inch of ground on the qualities (strong reporting, great writing, seriousness of purpose) that have made The Globe and Mail an important part of Canadian society for more than 160 years.

They’ve also added a new lifestyle section, Globe Life, shifted business agate to the web and launched ReportonBusiness.com. Here’s the half-page guide to the redesign published in today’s paper (PDF here).

The redesign was an in-house job by a team led by Editorial Design Director David Pratt and Assistant Art Director David Woodside.

Here are some pages from today’s edition, courtesy of Michael Bird, Deputy Managing Editor, Presentation and Editing.

L.A. Times Creative Director Joe Hutchinson will become the art director of Rolling Stone, L.A. Observed and the SND blog are reporting. The New York Post said last month that Hutchinson turned the job down, but he’s reported to have reconsidered in the face of news that the Times will cut its workforce by 5 percent (150 positions, 70 of those from the newsroom), mostly through buyouts.

Striking front page by the Virginian-Pilot today. And a gutsy editorial choice.

Also, Pilot editor Denis Finley defends the photo choice on the Tuesday front page.

Update: Pilot design team leader Paul Nelson on how the page came together.

I’ve collected some front pages of the Virginia Tech massacres. Here are some Virginia front pages, here are the top 50 U.S. papers and some international papers. Update: I've added The Collegiate Times (above), the student newspaper at Virginia Tech. (Thanks, Colin!)

The Chicago Sun-Times launched a redesigned, more locally focused paper today.

As evidenced by the emphasized "Chicago" in the flag, they're beefing up their local orientation and adding more features such as
"Chicagopedia," a dictionary of Chicago words; "This Much I Know" where "interesting people tell you their secrets to a good life;" and "24/7," a 24-hour crime and mayhem roundup. The Sun-Times has been struggling in the Chicago market. Sun-Times Media's revenue fell 8.6% last year compared with the Tribune's 1.3% drop.

As far as the design, it will "make it more accessible, more modern and more readable for you, the reader. Because it's all about you."

Here's a guide to the new features. (Same thing here in a one-page PDF.)

Sun-Times advertising/marketing columnist Lewis Lazare writes:

Unexpected and uniquely local news stories will get top priority in the refreshed newspaper, which some ads in the rebranding campaign will reference as reflecting the "real Chicago."

Reflecting the increasing importance of the Web as a news resource, many stories will encourage readers to jump to the Web for additional specific content that might be tightly focused on Chicago — such as highly localized neighborhood guides — or links to the Web's best content on a range of topics.

Former Sun-Timeser Robb Montgomery's got a podcast interview with Editor Michael Cooke and Kenney Marlatt at SND posts a link to a video by Publisher John Cruickshank.

Outside reaction is starting to come in. Alan Jacobson says it's "one of the best redesigns seen in years."

With all the vim and vigor of Bakersfield, KC and Norfolk, the redesigned Sun-Times is bound to get some eyeballs, making the Chicago Tribune or award-winning Mercury News look like your father's Oldsmobile.

But my old friend Steve Rhodes, a veteran Chicago media observer and proprieter of the excellent Beachwood Reporter, is less taken with it:

Ho-hum. While there are some decent elements, it still looks like a dowdy newspaper. And those full-length photos of columnists are nothing but a distraction. But the real problem is one that every redesign faces — that old lipstick on a pig thing. Unfortunately, nobody wants to improve the pig. It's not that hard to understand. Campbell's can change the label all they want, but if their soup still sucks, their soup still sucks. If the Sun-Times — or any paper — wants more readers, you have to make a better newspaper (website not only included, but emphasized). And making a better, must-read newspaper means quality journalism, not "Chicagopedia" entries that purport to explain what words such as "buddy" mean in to people who live here. Redesigns always work around the edges, and in areas like packaging health and shopping news, but never seem to spark better ways to actually report on the city — and that's the guts of any newspaper. Just once I'd like to see a redesign that also gamed out an investment and redeployment of reporters throughout the city, instructed reporters to always wonder during an interview why they're being lied to, and, say, mandated that each reporter file at least one Freedom of Information request a month. That would be a newspaper that would show readership gains.

Also, a couple weeks ago, Rhodes reported:

When asked why the paper didn't invest more in the paper's website, Editor-in-Chief Michael Cooke was heard to say that nobody believes what they read on the Internet.

Here are more pages from today's paper:

Poynter introduced the major findings (video; text script here) of its latest EyeTrack study at ASNE last week, and it’s getting a lot of pixels, mostly because it suggests that people read more of a story online (77 percent) than in print (62 percent broadsheet, 57 percent tabloid).

Other interesting findings:

• Alternative story forms seem to result in greater comprehension and 15 percent more visual attention (30 percent in broadsheet) than traditional narrative forms.


• Large photos and headlines draw the eyes in print, but online, navigation bars, teasers and story lists get primary attention.


• Color photos and live, documentary news photos got more attention than staged photos.

Our research shows that content selection is the number one driver of readership, and that relevant content about pocketbook issues and health/personal safety trumps all other kinds of stories, regardless of form.

Eyetrack07 does not include any consideration or evaluation of these content-based issues. It's limited to what people look at rather than why they read.

One thing to note about their “people read more online” stats: The sites they studied, StarTribune.com and sptimes.com, tend not to split stories into many pages, unlike others. I gotta think that’s gonna have an effect.

By the way, kudos to Will Sullivan for illustrating his post mentioning EyeTrack with the perfect image.

XPress, a new Garcia Media-designed weekly tab in Dubai, launched on March 15.

Mario Garcia says:

The culture of the “always on” thrives on high tech and all the gadgets that surround it — from mobile telephone news alerts and text messages to emails, photos and video clips. Many members of the “always on” generation start feeling neglected if ten minutes go by and they have not received a text message or email from anyone.

So it is within the framework of this modern reader/user that your new Xpress has been carefully crafted. The newspaper in front of you today emphasizes the techniques of modern newspaper rethinking:

1. Ease of navigation.
2. A two-track approach to news and feature presentation.
3. A small format that is easier to carry and to manage.
4. Color-coding to identify sections.
5. Innovative advertising positioning

I’ve been meaning to link to the live blogging my pals Matt Mansfield and Jonathon Berlin have been doing over at the SND Update blog from the Malofiej International Infographic Awards in Pamplona. And now, well, they’re done. And the awards have been announced. The highest award, the Peter Sullivan Prize, goes for the first time to an online entry, The New York Times’ awesome interactive Sector Snapshot. The Times also won a Gold for their Election 2006 interactive graphics. Other Gold winners were Clarin (Argentina), Expresso (Portugal), San Jose Mercury News (U.S.), The Oregonian, (U.S.), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), The Guardian (UK), Welt am Sonntag (Germany), Mundo Estranho (Brazil) and National Geographic (U.S.)

SND has the entire award list (PDF) and the online awards (PDF w/links).

Also, Charles Apple has been blogging for days from the Publish Asia conference in Manila.

The Society for News Design has got themselves one of them interweb-log deals. Many updates about society doings and other things of interest. So hop into one of those internet tubes and head over there.

>SND Update: The Blog [SND.org]

The San Antonio Express-News has changed up its front page, saying it needs to reflect the reality of readers being "more informed, more wired &emdash; and yes, much more busy taking it all in."

There's an "interactive" graphic online that briefly explains the changes.

"Change comes today with a new format designed around two key goals. First, we are providing readers with a larger menu of items, allowing the front page to be a better window into the rest of the paper. Second, we're doing more to emphasize and develop our best story of the day, focusing as much as possible on local news you won't find anywhere else."

And here, from Paul Wallen of the San Diego Union-Tribune, is a Q&A with Dean Lockwood, design director at the Express-News:

From the home office in San Diego, the Top 5 questions about the new San Antonio Express-News front page:

5.) There seem to be three central ideas in the new Express-News front page format: A pair of rails that you're calling "zippers," a "tab on broadsheet" emphasis above the fold and a promo at the top that focuses on selling one inside story in a big way, rather than a variety of inside content. Can you provide some background on each of these changes and the goals behind them?

Those are the key themes. The promos were an easy call -- our promos the last few years have been weak mainly because too much junk was being shoved into them -- too many topics and too many words. The more stuff in there, the busier they got and they less effective they were. Really, the promo should be viewed as a kind of advertisement. So our new promos will feature a single item, strong. They also won't follow any kind of template. Other than general font choices, it will be a different approach every day. Adrian Alvarez, who joined the paper midway into the front-page development process, took the lead on the new promo looks. He's really brought a fresh energy to them.

The zippers (these things just gotta have goofy catch names, I think) were a challenge. We've never been a "rail paper" but with the new emphasis on the web and multiple "hits," we knew we'd have to get on board with this in some form. Honestly, I started playing with two narrow rails just for the novelty -- I don't think anyone else is doing it. (Hmm … perhaps there's a reason for that?) At first it was just to see if I could make it work visually. But as I played with it, it started making more sense. We gave each zipper it's own mission. The left one is basically our hard news briefing while the right one is a bit of a catch-all. A home for the "fun" news stuff, utility info like sports scores and, of course, online promotion. That all worked itself out pretty easily. Designing the news between the zippers was a bit more of an adventure, and it produced an unexpected benefit.

The whole "tab on broadsheet" thing was an unexpected result of flanking both sides of the page with the zippers. I found I couldn't design the 1A lineup the same way -- with semi-strips, "muted" lead stories and all those other compromise things we do to parse the play of the news each day. The zipper format started forcing me into making a commitment to one or maybe two items up top. A bit like a tabloid makes a choice on its story of the day. The more I thought about that, the more I thought that was a good thing. We're a broadsheet, of course, so we have room for a few more stories. But in general, we're going to try to emphasize our best local story strong up top each day. Adrian Alvarez really gave me the confidence to really push this.

4.) You have been prototyping published lineups in preparation for launching the new format. What kind of challenges did you face as you went through that process?

Between myself and Adrian, there was a good bit of prototyping. And you know what? It was HARD. Much harder than I thought it would be. All the "rules" for designing a broadsheet front just didn't seem to work. It really is like desiging in a different page format. The biggest thing we noted was the need to go relatively simple and clean on the down-page stories. There's just so much "stuff" on this page that we're really cognizant of the junk factor. We'll have to watch that a lot.

3.) What kind of flexibility has been built into the new format to handle different types of news days or breaking news?

Well, our flexibilty was tested on the very first night -- got live, very vertical art -- naturally, something we hadn't prototyped! Maybe not quite the package I would have liked to have wrestled with on the first night, but I think we pulled it off. Beyond that, the whole idea of "zippers" was for flexibility. One or both can zip down to accommodate big news play. Other papers have similar policies for their rails. My best, unintentionally funny quote came while trying to explain what sorts of news would warrant lowering the zippers: "Castro dies -- zippers go down." Yes, I said it. In a room full of editors. Took me a good 10 seconds to figure out what all the smirking and snickering was about.

2.) Does the new format represent any changes in content and editing, or is it strictly a change in how the front page is being packaged for readers?

It calls for a lot of changes in thinking, mostly. Especially about our 1A lineup -- and about what constitutes a "lead story." A traditional broadsheet format provides lots of compromise possibilities for editors. This format (as with a tabloid) forces us to make a commitment. That's very different thinking. The zippers provide a logistical challenge for our copy desk. They've reorganized to have a page one editor dedicated each night to focus on the lead package and the zippers info.

1.) And the number one question is … The opening statement in your users guide describes this as "the most fundamental format change in modern Express-News history – way bigger than Wingo." What is Wingo, and what kind of impact has it made on the Express-News?

Hah! That's an inside joke. In fact, I'm not sure if some of our younger designers will even have a clue about that. Years back, when this was a two-paper town, the Express-News was locked in a death match with the San Antonio Light. Wingo was a bingo-like game that was promoted brazenly on the front page. Tacky as all get-out -- but apparently it worked, as the Light eventually went down for the count.

LA Observed notes today that over the weekend the LA Times has scaled back some of the front-page typography that was changed last fall, apparently eliminating the Titling Gothic Compressed and some of the stacked decks. He also says Times editor Jim O'Shea was seen escorting around Tony Majeri, design legend and former Chicago Tribune senior editor for innovation a couple weeks back.

The Arizona Republic has retooled its Monday newspaper "for busy people," editor Ward Bushee says.

Luke Knox of the Republic says the new Monday edition features

... shorter stories, more short-form information and content to help readers kick-start their week. It's basically the antithesis of the usual Monday product you may find from a number of papers, filled with retread stories and no real news to sink your teeth into.

The new Monday Republic is compressed into three sections: an expanded A section that includes the Valley & State and Biz sections folded inside, an expanded Sports section, and an expanded Features section. Section fronts have one, (mostly) non-jumping story and a series of lists, refers and other devices to get the reader into the section.

Redesign work was done primarily by Tracy Collins and Bill Pliske, and executed by the design staff.

>Today's edition designed for busy people [Arizona Republic]

Mint, a new financial daily in India, launched in print and online today. Garcia Media did the design for both the print and online products. Mario Garcia writes about his approach to the design:

1. It should be colorful, like India itself.


2. Ideally it should be in a small format -- we did versions of broadsheet and Berliner, and opted for the smaller, easier to handle format.


3. It must have perfect fusion with the online product. And, in fact, I recommended from the start that this product should appear FIRST as an online newspaper, and then two weeks later on print. That is the way it will be. This newspaper is born as an online product.


4. There should be substance, but also quick reads.


5. Navigation should be paramount.

>Mint [Garcia Media]
>Have a (live) Mint [Garcia Media]

I’ve been negligent in linking to this, but be sure to check out Alan Jacobson’s excellent new(ish) Best Front Design feature. He looks at a selection of the day’s pages and analyzes why he thinks they work (or not!). And now that he’s got commenting enabled, it’s even excellent-er.

(This link has nothing to do with the fact that he picked my newspaper’s front page today. Really. I had nothing to do with the page anyway. Really!)

Update: Jacobson and Quark are going to award $1,000 in cash and more than $1,000 in Quark software to the designer of the best front page every month. January's winner is Robert Suhay of Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot.

>Best Front Design (Brass Tacks Design)

Los Angeles Times Editor James O’Shea on Wednesday announced major changes on the horizon for the paper, including a redesign. If you seem to remember that the Times just redesigned part of the paper recently, you’d be right. But this, O’Shea says, will be a “real redesign.”

I am going to establish a second working group from the newsroom to help me with another major challenge we face, redesigning the print newspaper to make it an effective backbone for latimes.com.

Sometime this fall, the Los Angeles Times, like every other major paper including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and others, will adapt a 48-inch press web that will create a newspaper that will be slightly narrower than the one we currently publish.

There is no stopping this conversion. The entire industry is moving that way. Even if we were not going to make any newsroom changes, the new press web width would probably require a redesign.

This time, though, we are going to do a real redesign, one that questions and challenges every section of the newspaper, a redesign that relates individual sections to the newspaper as a whole.

This effort will come from within the newsroom. We will lead it, but we will also include in our working group some thoughtful colleagues from outside the newsroom, people who have expertise and experience in areas unfamiliar to journalists.

Ideally I would like to take a year to rethink everything we do. But we don't have the luxury of that much time. Innovation is something we have to do in the newspaper every day. It is an ongoing process.

So we probably will do a phased redesign that will play out over the next year. The redesign working group will work this out.

>Editor James O’Shea unveils Web initiative at Times [L.A. Times]
>James O’Shea’s address to Times staff [L.A. Times]

Here are some before-and-afters from the Rocky Mountain News. New pages on the right. In the larger images I’ve adjusted the new pages to reflect the smaller size. Update: Also, the Rocky’s opened up access to its electronic edition until midnight Friday, so take a look for yourself.

Update2: Roger Black weighs in in the comments on the previous post.

There are actually many spreads in the paper, particularly at the front of each section , which you don't show, and neither does the web site's ActivePaper PDF reader. But if you see the printed edition, the size, the layout-as-spreads, the increased color, the no-jump booking, the more informal headlines style, it begins to look like a magazine.

<snip>

John Temple has been talking about the redesign on his blog for months, and there have been many opportunities for readers to tell the paper what they want, and they have. The little poll on the logo development is part of a continuing process to bring readers in on the defintion of the Rocky brand. The question here is, "Is it The Rocky or is it Rocky Mountain News?" The staff is extremely interested to see how people react to that, because they went pretty far down the road (as you can see) to actually changing the name of the paper. And the defnition of a brand is never finished, nor is a paper's design. These are processes, not events.

Here are some spreads from today’s paper:

Roger Black worked on the project, and has a few thoughts and pages on his blog. The Rocky also has a blog post about the redesign, with comments enabled. Editor John Temple has already chimed in in the comments.

The Rocky Mountain News in Denver and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel both launched redesigns today. Both papers have also reduced their size. The indefatigable Charles Apple has more details at VisualEditors (Rocky, Milwaukee).

They look nice, but nothing too radical here, from what I can see (my rant on that here). Some new fonts and some general cleaning up. Rocky editor John Temple writes the paper’s “conceived more like a magazine,” but just says that in relation to where columns are placed. Is that a larger philosphical shift as well? The front does look more magazine-like (Alan Jacobson says the photo’s “ambiguous and passive”), but is that just because they’re kicking off a big honkin’ 33-part series?

And this bugs me. There’s an audio slideshow by Temple on the evolution of the flag through the redesign process. (Those flags, by the way, have the distinct and lovely smell of Jim Parkinson, but that’s speculation Parkinson wasn't involved, Roger Black says.) You can also vote for which one you would pick. But why do that now, when it doesn’t matter? To me, that almost seems more contemptuous of reader opinion than not asking at all. If you really cared what readers thought about that, you’d do it before you actually made the decision.

Looks like I’ll have to give up my dream of being the first newspaper designer to make People Magazine. Mario Garcia has been named one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics by People en Español. He’s right there on Page 64, next to Shakira and her not-lying hips.

It reads, roughly:

Such is his reputation when creating new forms to display the news, that this talented 59-year-old Cuban is a legend in his industry. Editors throughout the world, from Bogota to Dubai, entrust their newspapers to him. One of his most well-known projects but is the redesign of the renowned Wall Street Journal.

The public radio show Studio 360 devoted part of this week’s episode to the new Wall Street Journal. Design writer and former I.D. Magazine editor Chee Pearlman weighs in with about 5 minutes of commentary.

It just feels like a little Mini-Me of the Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal Jr. It’s cute, it’s little, it’s a little bit more friendly. You’d be lying to say that you’re doing it for the convenience of the reader. It’s lost an inch and a half on each side in order for them to save somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 million a year. That’s not for the reader. Trust me on that one.

The new narrower, Mario Garcia-redesigned Wall Street Journal is out today. Free on the newsstands and online today, apparently. Romenesko’s got links. Here are some of today’s section fronts and a page about the new design from the reader’s guide. Here’s a PDF of that page.

Garcia says he was already getting positive reader e-mails before dawn. But for his part, web designer Greg Storey says “who in their infinite ivy-league 5th Avenue wisdom spilt McClatchy all over this morning’s Wall Street Journal?”

Update: Here's the full PDF of the Reader's Guide.

Also, I've been playing around with something as a daily feature. Here's a page with the Top 50 (or so) circulation U.S. front pages from today.

Great juxtaposition on Denver newsstands today (provided you can get to Denver newsstands today). Interesting that in defiance of stereotype, it’s the tabloid that’s more understated.

In Seattle, they’re still reeling from last week’s big storm. Thousands are still without electricity and six people have died from carbon monoxide poisoning as the result of using charcoal or generators inside. More than 100 have been hospitalized. The Seattle Times responded to that today by devoting the top half of their front page to a public service message in six languages.

Poynter’s Al Tompkins talked with Times executive editor David Boardman, and Jeremy Gilbert talked to Heidi de Laubenfels, the Times AME for visuals and technology, about how it came together.

Q. What has the response been?

A. It has been overwhelmingly positive. One reader said it is one of the most valuable and socially responsible things the Times has ever done. The director of Public Health Seattle & King County said, “I want to personally express my deep appreciation for the top of The Seattle Times front page dedication to warnings about carbon monoxide poisoning. You can be assured that your support during this time has helped prevent tragedy. I know that your staff are proud of your commitment and leadership, and we feel very fortunate to have you as a public health partner.”

The Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer couldn’t print today (except for about 13,000 early copies of the Times) because of a power outage caused by a powerful storm that slammed into the Pacific Northwest Thursday night. Saturday editions might be in jeopardy, as well. Both the Times and the P-I allowed free access today to electronic editions of the print version. Interesting, and certainly an easy thing for the papers to do, considering they already produce the electronic editions and merely had to open up free access to them. But one wonders how useful it really is. You can click on a link at the top of the home page to see 12- to 18-hour-old news in a clunky, difficult-to-navigate interface, or you can go further down the page and find fresh news that’s constantly updated, easy to read and at least has the potential for community interaction.

I’d be curious to know how successful these “E-editions” or things like PressDisplay are. As a newspaper designer, I find them useful as a way to see other papers’ print design, but I can’t imagine actually reading one on a regular basis. They just seem like a very mid-90s, print-centric, “let’s put the newspaper on the Web” kind of solution.

The New York Times has a story (and video) today on Turkish artist Serkan Ozkaya, who creates faithful, line-by-line copies of newspaper pages. He created the illustration for the Times page (above) on which the story about him appears.

“A newspaper is history, one-a-day history,” he said. “It’s our memory of what happened. So to make a drawing of it, to make a simulation of it, is what art always does: to mimic life, to mimic what is real.” Though in his case, of course, it’s a drawing of a copy of a version of what happened, holding a mirror up to nature with a refraction or two in between.

Godspeed to all my friends in San Jose, many of whom will sit by the phone this morning to find out if they’ve still got a job. MediaNews is cutting 27.5 guild FTEs today, down from the 69 that was planned before yesterday’s deal.

The Wall Street Journal, shrinking its page size by three inches on Jan. 2, will unveil the Mario Garcia redesigned version today in New York. The move to a 12-inch-wide front page brings the Journal in line with most American broadsheets (except The New York Times, which makes the switch next August April) and is expected to save Dow Jones $18 million a year.

Executives and advertisers are happy, but some Journal journalists aren’t. “Lopping a column off the paper is not a quality move,” reporter E. S. Browning told The New York Times. “It will be harder to do long-form journalism when there is less space on Page One.” Editors say to compensate for the lost space, the number of pages will be increased, some statistical information will be cut, and the paper will be more tightly edited.

Garcia told the Times the narrower format presented a challenge. “It was like dressing Kate Moss.”

Update: PR Week has a Q&A with Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger.

Did the redesign that you did in 2002 not go far enough? Many of the themes seem to be the same - such as navigation?

Steiger: You can't do everything at once. Remember, when we made those changes, our readers had been used to black and white, tombstone vertical layout on page one. What we gave them was an additional section three days a week, plus color on all of the section fronts, and I just didn't want to produce too many coronaries out there. It worked; readers liked it. But [in the] meantime, time is moving very, very fast in the news space, and the acceleration of the use of the web, including our own Web site, for readers to stay in touch with news, meant that it was time to go into the well again.

The rejigged Journal will also brim with summaries of all sorts. The paper plans to digest news from other news sources in one column, summarize "the key news by industry and news topic" in another, and even condense the paper's long features to "draw out the key meaning." Sounds like they'll be paying royalties to USA Today, doesn't it?

Previous coverage:
>Shrinking the Journal (Oct. 11, 2005)
>“Reimagining” the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 20, 2006)
>WSJ 3.0 (June 2, 2006)

Today's Front Pages, originally uploaded by veen.

Jeff Veen finds a Berkeley cafe that appears to be putting the Newseum's daily exhibit to use.

La Tribune, a Paris financial daily, launched a Garcia Media-led redesign Monday (new pages on the right). Garcia Media’s Mario Garcia and Christian Fortanet worked with Francois-Xavier Pietri, La Tribune editor in chief, and Henry Houssay, art director.

Here’s Garcia’s rundown:

1. A front page that is designed to offer a quick glance at the main headlines of the day.

2. A page 2-3 “mini newspaper within the newspaper” that offers a five-minute glance at the content of that day’s newspaper. “This will be a highlight of this project for many readers,” Garcia said. “It is 100% utility and service for that busy reader who wants to get a good heads up on the news of the day before attending his/her first meeting.”

3. Better hierarchy throughout the entire newspaper, with bigger and bolder headlines.

4. More secondary readings to amplify information, or to send readers to other sources and related topics.

5. Greater fusion between the print and online edition (which was also designed with the help of Garcia Media’s team of Mario Garcia Jr and John Miller).

6. A color palette that identifies various sections of the newspaper, starting with the navigator.

7. Newly designed and rethought informational graphics style.

8. Redesign of all supplements.

9. New typographic fonts: Gotham Bold for new logo; Miller for headlines, with Guggenheim in various weights used for contrast throughout the entire newspaper.

10. New presentation of advertising, including advertising configurations never used before.

“The new La Tribune will be a more analytical, but still newsy, financial newspaper of record, but also more personalized,” Pietri said. “We will tell more stories from the personal viewpoint of those making news.”

The Times of London today rolls out a new typeface, Times Modern, and a few other design changes, including a redrawn insignia in the nameplate.

The art director on the project was Neville Brody, who says the changes are more evolution than revolution.

“The Times had almost all of the tools it needed to create a dynamic, usable, clearly-articulated and familiar language from within its current vocabulary. What it lacked was a few catalytic elements and an evolved architecture (both page and section). Following its move from broadsheet size, the paper still carried some of the design language of the larger format. Essentially, the approach we adopted has been more architectural than decorative and more fundamental than surface. Visual elements and devices needed to be re-visited from the ground up and rationalised within a clear plan and layout.”

Of the new typography, David Driver, head of design for The Times, writes:

The Times Modern introduced today allows a better shaped headline with extra characters per line. This allows for more articulation in the process of writing. The change is not reckless impulse, but reading conditions for many people have become less leisurely. Newspaper typography should evolve to meet technological innovations and The Times is once again at the sharp end.

The body copy remains Times Classic. They’ve also introduced Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Gotham to the lineup.

On the editorial page, Times editors say: The relationship between The Times and its readers is curiously personal for a mass-market publication. In the past a thousand pens might have leapt from their inkwells to protest about a facelift to a familiar friend. But few of our readers today read us at leisure in leather armchairs. We, too, must move with the times, from the age of stiff collars into an age of relaxed formality.

They’re also soliticing questions for a Brody Q&A.

And don’t miss this very cool slideshow of 221 years of Times nameplates.

My favorite quote from the internal guide to the redesign: “The redesign centres on a new headline font, “Times Modern”. This font should NOT be squeezed! It has been drawn to be more condensed — and Big Brother is watching.”

Some more page comparisons, new pages on the right:

Update: Alan Formby-Jackson interviews Prowse.

>The Times They are a Changing - Thanks to Neville Brody's Research Studios [PRNewswire]
>After 221 years, the world’s leading newspaper shows off a fresh face [The Times]
>Times Modern: Changing our typeface in order to make life easier for the reader [The Times]

The Belgian newspaper De Morgen, which redesigned in April, has been named Europe’s Best Designed National Newspaper in the eighth European Newspaper Award. Other winners of Europe’s Best Designed Newspaper awards:

• Bergens Tidende, Norway, Regional Paper
• Hufvudstadbsladet, Finland, Local Paper Plus
• Expresso, Portugal, Weekly
• Superdeporte, Spain, Judges’ Special Recognition

Ninety-one newspapers received Awards of Excellence in the competition.

First in Israel and now in Romania, they loves them some Guardian!

Ally Palmer of Palmer Watson sends word of a couple European projects they’ve recently finished. Denmark’s Politiken on Oct. 1 and Norway’s Adresseavisen on Sept. 16. Both were pretty radical changes. Politiken has “reinvented” itself, moving away from conventional news reporting. And Adresseavisen converted from broadsheet to compact. Here are some pages and Ally’s words about each. There’s more info at palmerwatson.com

Politiken

One of the most influential newspapers in Europe, has taken a brave step into the future.

Denmark’s respected daily broadsheet recently introduced a Palmer Watson redesign - but also reinvented the way it handles and presents news. It has abandoned its traditional news reporting format and replaced it with a two-tier system which is intended to combine the qualities of an online newsfeed and a news magazine.

The aim is to give readers the best of both worlds. The “overview” area of the pages provides a functional, comprehensive news service, produced and presented in a compact, efficient way to keep it as up to date as deadlines allow.

The “insight” area is where selected issues are given the “Politiken treatment” – quality writing, rigorous reporting, serious analysis - illuminated by some of the best photo-journalism you will see in any newspaper.

Alongside this significant change of approach in response to the challenge of new media and the explosion of free papers in Denmark, the paper updated its look - but this was a rethink, not a redesign.

Adresseavisen

Norway’s oldest newspaper, has made a hugely successful transition to tabloid.

The compact revolution swept into Norway earlier this autumn. Adresseavisen, based in Trondheim, was one of four regional broadsheets to convert to tabloid on the same day: the others were Bergens Tidende, Stavanger Aftenblad and Faedrelandsvennen in Kristiansand.

Adresseavisen, 239-years-old, is one of Norway’s strongest brands. It dominates its region, reaching a huge percentage of the population. But already impressive readership statistics read even better after the switch from broadsheet to tabloid:  subscriptions are up by  5,300 taking circulation to 84,400. And the advertising volume is down 20% but the revenues are up 10%.

Alan Jacobson has a response to my redesigns and circulation post, noting that circulation isn’t the only metric that should be considered when discussing the success of a redesign, that increased revenue would indicated success. He notes that the Bakersfield and Waterbury redesigns (for which he consulted) have showed increased classified revenues since their redesigns.

He is, of course, correct. (And he makes some other fine points about promotion, follow-through and content.) It wasn’t my intention to label these redesigns as failures. I just thought it’d be interesting to chart recent redesigns against the one easily obtainable and widely watched newspaper metric. I’m sure someone with the time and access to more sophisticated data could come to some more valuable conclusions. (Seems there are plenty of organizations and think tanks out there that could pull something like that off. Me, I’m just some guy blogging in his spare time.)

Still, I don’t think you can entirely separate revenue from circulation. If circulation continues to fall, print revenue will surely follow. The revenue will follow the eyeballs. The key, of course, is to make sure the eyeballs go to one of our other delivery platforms.

Update: Mary Nesbit, managing director of the Readership Institute at Northwestern University, says:

We need to be careful about what these charts are really telling us, because they don't take into account contextual factors. For instance:

1. Circulation "policy" in effect -- like decisions to cut way back on or stop discounting; decisions to cut out other low-paid categories; decisions to restrict circulation in certain areas etc.

2. The strategy or intent of the newspaper in mounting a redesign. The strategy, for instance, may be to maintain or grow readership (which is different from circulation.) Or it may be to grow readership in a particular segment. Or it may be to bring a more contemporary feel to a dated product. Or -- to sell more ads.

3. The nature of the redesign itself. Was it cosmetic redesign, or far-reaching changes to content, or some of both?

4. Internal factors. How much marketing was going on at the same time? What intensity of customer focus was at play in the circulation department? In advertising? Was the whole organization aligned against a circulation strategy?

Lacking this kind of data, interpretation is almost impossible. We come away from the charts with two things that may or may not be related: paid circulation continues on a downward trend at these properties (and in the industry generally, though readership of the print product and usage of the website are a much prettier picture); and these newspapers undertook redesigns. That's all really we can say.

>Lies, damn lies and statistics [Brass Tacks Design]

Those circulation numbers are out, and unsurprisingly, they’re not pretty. But they’re not the whole story, either. The number of unique visitors to online newspaper sites in the third quarter of 2006 was up 24 percent over last year.

It’s pretty clear where the eyeballs are migrating, and it’s not to the deadwood. So whether you think print will dominate for decades or will “fall off the cliff” within 10 years, the direction of that trendline is clear. So where does that leave us newspaper designers? It should leave us at the forefront of the conversation about what comes next, if we’re willing to step up.

Jay Small wrote an excellent and thought-provoking post last week that says he’s coming to the conclusion that American newspapers are spending too much of their resources on design.

He references the recent redesigns in St. Pete and Los Angeles and says:

In either case -- in fact, in any of the redesigns you can see on NewsDesigner.com from the past two years -- would you honestly expect a measurable return on investment? How much does the needle have to move to make the redesign worth the time and money you could have spent on other things?

The conversation we need to start having is not so much about fonts and navigation and color palettes (not that those are bad conversations to have), but about what's next for the print newspaper. It’s the cliche of the moment, but it’s also true: We’re not newspapers anymore, we're news organizations. And we need to be planning for the day when the print edition is not the core product, but just one of several ways we engage people, get them information and facilitate their conversations. Because this is not off in some misty future; this could be reality before the tires on your car wear out.

So what does print become? A best-of compilation of the online edition? A customizable buffet of sections for each subscriber to pick from? An Economist-style compendium of in-depth reporting and analysis, leaving the breaking news for the Web?
Is it free? Is it tabloid? Is it hyperlocal? (Or all three?)

Heck if I know, but it’s time to talk about it.

Oh, and we should be part of the online design conversation, too. Lord knows most newspaper websites out there look pretty craptastic. We’ve stayed out of that fight for too long, and beyond all reason, the “ugly design works” camp is winning.

>Raise bar for newspaper design investments [Small Initiatives]

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander is defending his newspaper’s use of a Bears helmet in the nameplate from a volley fired by Rick Morrissey, columnist for the “jacket-required, phony-laden cruise ship known as the Chicago Tribune.”

This detail, Morrissey wrote, is disgusting because it shows “the paper is rooting for the boys in blue and orange to get to the Super Bowl in Miami,” and “[p]andering to the emotions of fans is not our job in journalism.”

Me, I call it newspaper design.

>Root, root, root for home team? It’s not our job [Chicago Tribune]
>Other ship’s argument just doesn’t float [Chicago Sun-Times]

Reaction abounds to the new LAT design. In addition to the comments from the fine readers of this blog, Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog (Drum lives in the L.A. area) says it’s “exactly the look of the Times’ corporate parent, the Chicago Tribune. So now the Times looks like every faceless second-tier metro daily in the country. Yippee.” His commenters mostly go negative as well.

Kevin Roderick’s L.A. Observed says “I liked the Sunday page better when I could only see the upper half. Opened full it has too many competing fonts for my taste and a personality that screams cacophony rather than edited order.”

Designer Jim Coudal says it’s “lovely” and calls the multiple decks on the lead story “A step forward that comes from looking backwards.”

More comments on the LAT’s Opinion L.A. blog and on this L.A. Voice post. Some are upset at the reduction from seven stories to four on Page One (you’ll note today’s front, above, has six). The inevitable USA Today comparisons also arise.

My favorite comments so far: “Headlines, in the main section no less, where most of the words aren’t even capitalized? That’s the very essence of second-rate.” and “The front page looks like it can kick more ass than before. And in a newspaper, I think that’s a good thing.”

On the other coast, the St. Pete Times published a bunch of the more than 4,000 responses they got to its redesign today. In response to comments, the paper is tweaking some things, including going to a heavier weight of Brown behind the color screens and making some changes to puzzles and the weather page.

A redesigned front page and A-section of the Los Angeles Times dropped today, with some bold new typography, more breakouts and some other changes. News Design Director Michael Whitley graciously favored me with some details.

The new design was created by LAT Creative Director Joseph Hutchinson. It continues the work done in 2002 on the features sections and will migrate to the California, Business and Sports sections in the first quarter of next year.

Typographically, the lead headline (for 2-columns or bigger) is Titling Gothic Compressed light or medium. The headline for one column leads or one column news stories above the fold is LA Gothic Bold Extra condensed (custom draw of Titling Gothic). Serif headlines are LA Headline and LA Headline bold, which is a custom draw of Kis).

Other new things are large skyboxes for weekend edition (above), the bulldog/early Sunday edition that is out Saturday, and smaller ones for Sunday final. No skyboxes for the rest of the week.

Headlines are down-style instead of the traditional Up Style.

There’s a new graphics pallet and some screened colors for boxes and breakouts on the inside.

Here’s the A1 note from Editor Dean Baquet (couldn’t find it online):

Starting today, you will notice major changes in the appearance of the Los Angeles Times. On Sundays, pictures at the top of the page will highlight stories and sections inside. Headlines will come in a greater variety of styles and sizes. On inside pages, more boxes and graphics will offer background on major news stories. On weekdays, the changes are even more pronounced. Column One, long a showcase for The Times’ best story-telling, will be presented more dramatically. And the weekday and Saturday editorial pages will move from the California section to the main news section. These changes will highlight our best work, make the paper more visually engaging and help readers find whatever interests them throughout the paper. You will see more changes in the coming months, all the result of much study of what our readers have told us they want from The Times.
DEAN BAQUET, Editor

Here are some inside A pages from today’s paper:

Here are today’s section fronts from the St. Pete Times, which launched its redesign today.

The St. Pete Times unveils its new design tomorrow morning, but here, thanks to Assistant Managing Editor/Presentation Patty Cox is a look at a recent crop of before-and-after prototypes. Cox writes:

Tomorrow’s St. Petersburg Times will have a vibrant, colorful new look. The mission of our new design was to combine our rich tradition of journalistic service with some fresh ways of keeping Tampa Bay residents “in the know” while respecting their time. The improvements to the newspaper are the most sweeping in a decade. They include more than a dozen new features, including two new Sunday sections, and a conversion to the 50-inch web.

Here’s a guide to the new look.

In mentioning the $25 million spent on press upgrades and other improvements, Times CEO and Editor Paul Tash extols the Times’ independence from Wall Street.

The capital investments leading up to the new look were a lot to bite off, but they might have been more difficult elsewhere. Most newspapers are owned as part of big public companies. With shareholders pressing for quarterly profits, they have a hard time looking past the problems of the moment to the possibilities that lie ahead.

The Times, on the other hand, is an independent newspaper, one of the few remaining in American journalism. Like any other business, we like profits, too, and we’re on the prowl against needless expense. But we’re also willing to spend a buck today, even if the payoff won’t come right away.

More pages after the jump.

>At the Times, we’re betting on the future [St. Petersburg Times]

>The New Look [St. Petersburg Times]

It’s only been on the street a few weeks, but News International’s thelondonpaper has already suffered a serious wound. And it’s self-inflicted. CR Blog reports that on Monday the paper sold a wrapper around the paper that used a fake front page, created by Channel 4’s in-house ad agency, 4creative, to sell the airing of their controversial film “Death of a President.”

4creative’s execution deliberately mimics the poster-style front pages that have become the norm for reporting major events in the press. The media savvy may have instantly made the connection between the front page image and More4’s posters and enjoyed the conceit, but many others would not.

The always-provocative Alan Jacobson says the old rules don’t work for newspapers anymore, and he’s got some new ones:

1 Get real about the Internet

2 Tie journalists’ pay to circulation

3 Ignore your loyal readers

4 Stop running news stories

5 Feed the cash cow

6 Drop the price

7 Solve the online revenue riddle

8 Promote as if success depends upon it

9 Join hands and sing Kumbaya

But again, that’s a nit. Alan’s got some good stuff there. Time to stop thinking about evolving and actually start revolutionizing things.

The job prospects for scribes were pretty bleak after Gutenberg. Our future could be just as bleak unless we act quickly and decisively.

>New Rules for Newspapers [Brass Tacks Design]

St. Petersburg Times Executive Editor Neil Brown previews the long-awaited Oct. 16 redesign of the paper today. He says the changes include narrowing the page width, “More news summaries and graphics to keep you ‘in the know,’” and more references to content on the Web.

Also in Florida redesign news, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel debuted some changes last Sunday. Nicole Bogdas has the details.

>For your Times, a new look [St. Petersburg Times]
>Sun-Sentinel's new look [Nicole Bogdas @ Visual Editors]

Here are some of today’s pages from Norfolk’s new free tab, Link, courtesy of design director David Putney. Here’s an 11-page PDF (5.9MB) that includes these pages.

The Virginian-Pilot launched its free 18-34 tabloid today, called Link. David Putney writes at Visual Editors:

My thought in designing protoypes was that the newspaper form itself looks tired to young people. They are used to seeing things like ESPN the Magazine, Cargo and Real Simple. Compared with that, newspapers looked as frumpy as a Buick Skylark. My goal was a magazine look. One thing that I have said a lot is that if we are going to be truly innovative, we can't do what has come before.

Our design philosphy is simple: large, colorful photos as dominent images. Quick, short, tightly edited stories. Conversational style. I had a poster at SND that said "We don't do boring ever." Maybe that's an exaggeration. We just try to cut the boring down to manageable levels. In other words, the dull stories that you wish you could cut down to six inches, well, we actually do.

Update 10/6: Some Friday pages here.

Los Angeles Times publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson has been pushed out by the Tribune Co. They've asked Editor Dean Baquet to stay on. Reports say he hasn't decided, but L.A. Observed says the newsroom rumor is that he's been offered a top job at the Washington Post. Stay tuned to Romenesko and L.A. Observed for updates and all the leaked internal e-mails.

Update: Baquet says he's staying.

Patrick Burgoyne at Creative Review’s blog notes that London’s Proud Galleries will hold an exhibition of front pages from the British tab The Sun.

This was graphic design that epitomised an era in British history: Brash, brutal, utterly tasteless. To its supporters it was wonderful, knockabout fun, and anyone who didn’t see it as such was a killjoy leftie — and probably a lesbian to boot.

>The (Graphic) Power of the Press [CRBlog]

Ever wondered who’s giving advertisers the ideas for some of these wacky ad shapes of late? Answer: We are!

Check out this odd 18-page PDF at the Newspaper Association of America site.

“Adscapes” are the latest look in newspaper advertising. No longer are newspaper ads relegated to squares and rectangles. Today, advertisers can attract attention with a variety of shapes and sizes. Take a look at the latest looks.

Cripes. I hope they didn’t pay good money for that genius piece of PR.

Wisconsin’s Oshkosh Northwestern (Gannett, 21,637) is letting the cat out of the ad stack. (Closer look)

Update: Brian points out the Gannett-owned Louisville Courier-Journal has been doing the same thing.

(Thanks, Donovan!)

The Sacramento Bee has made some changes to its section front design, tweaking the mix of stories and promoting more stories inside the paper. (Above: Old page left, new page right)

[Robert Casey, the assistant managing editor for visuals,] said the intent of the front page redesign as well as similar changes made on the covers of Metro, Business, Sports and Scene (as well as weekly Sunday sections such as Forum) is to help time-frazzled readers navigate the paper.

Readership studies, Casey said, show that people often don’t know about interesting stories inside the paper but would read them if they did. People aren’t aware of these stories because papers have done a poor job promoting them.

As a result, the new front-page design includes what are called “teases” to “5 stories to talk about today” with short, snappy headlines and photos, all placed above the masthead. In fact, a photo is now sometimes integrated into the masthead; such tampering with the masthead was strictly off-limits in the past.

>Public editor: Urgency to attract readers drives paper’s redesign [Sacramento Bee]

It’s tomorrow in Bangkok, so here’s tomorrow’s Nation.

Here are a few Thai front pages from today, as well as a couple from Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur.

Here’s what Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot did with the Sept. 11 anniversary. It was a four-page wrapper.

Pilot Graphics Director Charles Apple writes:

This was what our subscribers – and our single-copy readers – saw.

Sam Hundley did the design. The brief essay was by ace writer Lon Wagner, our narrative team leader.

You’ll find the name of the paper at the very top of the page, in about 6.5-point type.

Sam says he was asked months ago to come up with something special. He started out using the numeral 5, but nothing clicked. Then, he went through sketches that used the tick marks. Suddenly, the solution leaped out at him.

Sam used this at the Illustration Summit in Evanston, Ill., in June “as an example of how your subconscious can find a solution before you see it yourself,” sam says.

He originally drew it as an A1 centerpiece. Deb Withey, the Pilot’s DME/Presentation, insisted on clearing off the rest of the page and letting the image stand alone, Sam says. “You have to give her a lot of credit for that. She really got behind it.”

We received nice feedback from both inside and outside the paper. A member of our ad department wrote our editor:

“This piece really made me reflect on what I was doing during this time. The cover alone really had an impression on me as to what had happened and how things have changed in our society.”

And a reader somewhat pessimistically wrote:

“This is what will be lost when the V-P eventually is gobbled up by one of the mega-monsters. Brilliance, art, poetry. Communication at the deepest level. Nice job, y’all.”

Here are some Sept. 11 anniversary pages from the past couple days. More after the jump.

For more Sept. 11, 2001 pages, the Newseum has a gallery of more than 100 pages, and Poynter has a couple hundred from Sept. 11 and 12.

Looks like advertisers are embracing the “Hot L” treatment, if this page from today’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel is any indication.

Update: Jack Shafer writes in Slate today about ads on newspaper front pages and the hue and cry these (and other "imaginative") ads create.

Newspaper companies do experiment with ads, but mostly in their online ventures, which sends the message to advertisers and readers—the boomers-and-older generation still habituated to newspapers—that they've given print up for dead.

None of this is to suggest that the tired newspaper ad template can't sell goods and services. Of course it can. Indeed, one of the main reasons people read newspapers is to consume classified, real estate, and entertainment ads. But ask anybody who has ever tried to place a stimulating advertisement in a newspaper and you'll hear all about antiquated rules about ad location, size, configuration, and taste that are designed to prevent imaginative ads from running. Newspapers are as complacent in today's competitive ad market as they were when they held a near-monopoly over advertising.

The Telegraph-Journal of Saint John, New Brunswick, launches a redesign today. Lucie Lacava consulted on the project.

Publisher James C. Irving said:

“The Telegraph-Journal is one of the most important papers in the Maritimes, and what Lucie has done is given it a design that reflects the importance and the stature of the paper.”

Lacava said the Telegraph-Journal’s previous understated design simplified her task.

“It gave us a good starting point,” she said. “The design was very old school and that of a small-town newspaper. My mandate, and what I wanted the design to do, was give it a more worldy look and make it look more like a big-city paper.”

On the typography front, the redesign uses Font Bureau’s Whitman Display for headlines and display, Font Bureau’s Vonnes (also used in last fall's Reforma Group redesign) for navigation and graphics and Porchez Typofonderie’s Le Monde Journal for body text.

They also published an eight-page special section section (PDF) on the redesign.

(Thanks, Adam!)

In a Nieman Watchdog commentary, Gilbert Cranberg, a former editorial page editor of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, decries visual "space snatchers" who are taking up all that precious word space in newspapers. (They're also probably out tramping around on his lawn. Damn kids.)

If people want a visual medium, they can turn on the TV set, which no newspaper can rival no matter how much is invested in graphics. Readers subscribe to newspapers for text, not for artwork. To the extent that newspapers substitute overly-generous graphics for news and opinion they shortchange readers and alienate them.

When I see splurging on graphics I wonder, "Where was the editor?" Space is an editor's prize possession, but editors who do not hesitate to trim inflated stories seem to put away their red pencils when art is involved. They should no more abdicate to artists than to reporters.

Meanwhile, Alan Jacobson has a piece on "How to sell more newspapers." He argues, among other things, that for all our talk of innovation, we're not doing much of it. And we need to.

Let's see what innovation looks like. At the top of each page I see "skybox" promos - just like almost every other paper in America. Beneath these promos I see nameplates that stretch across the width of the page – just like almost every other paper in America. In the middle of each page I see a "centerpiece" - a large color photo packaged with a newsfeature that was probably crafted days before.

If this is innovation, then we're really in trouble. (Oh yeah, that's right. We are in trouble.)

And Mr. Cranberg won't like this part:

6. Admit it. Shorter is better
Before you tar-and-feather me, let me be clear: I am not saying all stories should be short – publish 10,000 words on Pricess Diana and Anglophiles will read every column inch. But most newspaper stories should be much shorter than they are today.

Let me get this straight: It's OK if you decide to use artwork to "dress up" your hopelessly outdated text-laden Des Moines Register opinion page. But it's NOT OK for the New York Times -- or anyone else -- to use artwork to tell a story or to explain how something happened or to compare and contrast a bunch of eye-glazing numbers?

I'll have to tell you, Mr. Cranberg, it's your attitude -- your assumptions and preconceived notions of what's good and bad for the readers you so badly misunderstand -- that is more likely to shortchange and alienate them.

The long-awaited Berliner-format Lafayette (Ind.) Journal and Courier (Gannett, 36,000) has hit the streets. It’s the first North American daily to switch to the Berliner format, which in this case is 12” by 18.5”, and if it’s a success, it may not be the last. E&P notes:

When the conversion was announced last year, Mark S. Mikolajczyk, then Gannett’s senior vice president of operations (and now publisher of its Florida Today, in Melbourne), called Lafayette “a prototype site” to serve as a test bed for the Berliner format.

Update: Somehow this slipped my brain, but I've been reminded that Lafayette isn't the first American Berliner. The Columbia Missourian converted its Sunday paper to Berliner in 2004.

Ido Kenan at Room 404 notes that the new, two-month-old design of the Israeli newspaper Hazofe looks a tad, well, familiar.

(Thanks, Mark!)

A Charlotte Observer photographer, Patrick Schneider, was fired Thursday for altering the color in the lead photo [larger version] of the Local section.

In the original photo, the sky in the photo was brownish-gray. Enhanced with photo-editing software, the sky became a deep red and the sun took on a more distinct halo.

The Observer’s photo policy states: “No colors will be altered from the original scene photographed.”

Schneider said he did not intend to mislead readers, only to restore the actual color of the sky. He said the color was lost when he underexposed the photo to offset the glare of the sun.

Update: Here's the Observer staff memo from yesterday:

From: Burkins, Glenn
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 10:15 PM
To: @Newsroom
Subject:

From: Rick, Cheryl, Tom, Glenn

We're sad to tell you that photojournalist Patrick Schneider is no longer with The Observer. We will announce this in a note to readers in Friday's paper. Patrick violated our policy about altering the color in a photograph that was on the Local front in Thursday's newspaper. He was involved in a previous incident with altering color in photographs, which the Observer told our readers about in 2003.

Those of you who have worked with Patrick know he is an extraordinary photojournalist who won tons of awards and was willing to drive into hurricanes and jump on a plane on a moment's notice. He won accolades for his work at the Olympics, contributed to Biloxi's Pulitzer entry, showed up at nearly every fire in this city and took some of the most action-packed, dynamic photos for our sports pages. A photo page a couple years ago in which Patrick photographed the hands of several professionals reflected his gifts. He has a talented eye, a love of news and great energy for the work.

This is not an ending any of us wanted. We will miss Patrick's passion for photojournalism.

We must hold fast to the standards we set for ourselves and our profession. Credibility is fragile and precious.

Glenn Burkins
Deputy Managing Editor
The Charlotte Observer

Here's the Observer page where the above photo ran.

Update2: SportsShooter.com has a thread going on this.

>Observer photo was altered improperly [Charlotte Observer]

(Thanks, Martin!)

... um, don't do this:

El Nuevo Herald, McClatchy's Spanish-language Miami daily, manipulated two photos, combining them into one, Miami New Times says.

The photo appeared to show two Cuban cops ignoring four prostitutes who were hailing a foreign tourist.

It pushed an anti-Castro agenda in a newspaper advertised by its new owners, McClatchy and Co., as the "most-honored, highest-circulation Spanish-language newspaper in the continental United States."

And, perhaps worse, higherups at El Nuevo overrode the objections of veteran photographer Roberto Koltun, who snapped both pictures several years ago in Cuba (and didn't return a call seeking comment). "Two things were put together," commented photo coordinator Orlando Mellado. "[Koltun] expressed concern about it for that reason and others. He basically didn't want it used."

But they apparently didn't do so good a job of it, the New Times points out:

In the doorway, there is a sharp variation in light between the right and left sides. Note the difference in perspective between the police officers and prostitutes. The police officers cast shadows. The prostitutes don't.

Editor of the Séptimo Día section, Andrés Reynaldo, explains:

"Our intention was to make a photomontage that included photos from several sources. We committed two errors: the graphic treatment did not correspond to that intention exactly, and we did not publish the proper credit," Reynaldo said.

One piece of evidence that shows the photographic composition was not done with a view to manipulating reality is that in the zone where the two photos are united, between the man with cap and the girl with shorts, a blurry strip can be seen, and there, underneath the hair of the small one, appears a shoe (noticeable with the circle) that corresponds to another man in the other photo, according to the editors. In addition, a close analysis of the photomontage shows that there is no continuity in the line of the sidewalk, added the editors.

They also have a slideshow of the photos in question.

>Listen Up, McClatchy [Miami New Times]

Following in the footsteps of the New York Times Mother Ship, The Boston Globe will begin selling advertising on the covers of its Business, Sunday Real Estate, Sports, and Food sections.

Ad space on the Business and Real Estate sections will be available Aug. 6, and soon afterward on the fronts of the other sections, [Globe president and general manager Mary] Jacobus said. "The front page of the Globe is not under consideration," Jacobus said, nor is the cover of the City & Region section.

...

The ads in the Business and Real Estate sections would be three-inch-high strips across the bottom of the page, she said. That would be similar in shape and size to the ads recently launched on the business cover of The New York Times, which, like the Globe, is owned by The New York Times Co. The marketing goal is to provide advertisers with high visibility among readers with high interest in that section's content.

Early results for selling ads on the front page of the Times Business section have been encouraging, Catherine J. Mathis, a Times vice president, said in an e-mail.

Interesting treatment on the front page of The Independent today. It advocates a point of view, to be sure (one might ask where the Hezbollah flag is), but does it in a quick, dramatic way.

(via Kottke)

Confirming speculation from this spring, The Wall Street Journal will begin running ads on its front page in September, The New York Times is reporting. It will be a square-shaped ad (they're calling it a "jewel box") that will run in the lower right-hand corner of the page, perhaps much like the tabloid overseas editions do. The ad could bring in more than $75,000 a pop.

At Poynter they are, of course, wringing their hands.

“As a traditionalist, I’m not thrilled by the idea,” said Bob Steele, who specializes in ethics and values at the Poynter Institute, which studies journalism. Front pages, he said, should be reserved for what the collective community considers to be news.

“Gannett has changed this equation considerably in the last few years with section-front and front-page ads, and now the Internet has presented a whole new table top,” he said. “The question becomes, how do newspapers protect their journalistic integrity at the same time they develop new revenue streams?”

Incidentally, as previously documented here and elsewhere, the Journal will redesign and introduce a narrower web width early next year.

>Wall Street Journal to Run Ads on Its Front Page [The New York Times]

In a move it’s been considering for a while, The New York Times will be narrowing its width and launching an “extensive” redesign in 2008. The newspaper will switch to a 48-inch web from the current 54 inches, meaning each page will be 1½ inches narrower. To compensate for the loss of space, editor Bill Keller says they’ll increase the number of pages, edit tighter and use more digests “or other abbreviated forms.” About the design, Keller says:

You cannot just take the current front page and squeeze it. We need to think hard about changing the look in ways that preserve the visual power, the urgency and the dignity of The New York Times. [Design Director] Tom Bodkin is already at work, along with several other senior editors, on a thorough examination of the A-book. He will now look for a redesign that we can execute in two stages — some changes we may introduce earlier, and then a new look to suit the narrower format when the page size changes in 2008.

Update: Stephen Colbert says: “We did it! That’s an inch and a half less of state secrets revealed every day!” Here’s the video:

>Times to Reduce Page Size and Close a Plant in 2008 [The New York Times]

Above are the front pages from today’s Kerala Kaumudi in Kerala, and Mid Day, a Mumbai tabloid. Below, some inside pages from Mid Day. Warning: The big photo on that doubletruck is pretty gruesome.

(Thanks to sajeev, Jan and Mario!)

Here's how some Indian newspapers played Tuesday's train bombings.

The azzurri did it! Here’s the thrill and the agony as reflected on the front pages of Italy and France.

Update: Paco at Maquetadores has posted a bunch more pages from all over the world, and sajeev kumar t.k, front page editor of Kerala Kaumudi in Kerala, India, has posted some of his paper's pages.

Jack Shafer: “Whatever you do, don’t mistake the decline of newspapers with the decline of journalism. Much of what we’re witnessing is the delayed right-sizing of newspapers and newspaper publisher and editor egos in the multimedia age.”

>The Incredible Shrinking Newspaper: Newspapers are dying, but the news is thriving [Slate]

Jeez, Indianapolis Star, for a newspaper that speaks with the Voice of God, you're being a real downer!

(Thanks, Mark!)

The Guardian is solidifying its spot as one of the most innovative news organizations out there. Later this summer the paper will begin offering a free downloadable PDF of content from the Guardian Unlimited website. It will be eight to 12 A4-sized pages (about 8.27×11.69 in) and will be updated every 15 minutes. Readers will be able to choose from five areas: general news, international, economics, sports and media.

"G24 will be yet another way for Guardian readers to consume their paper," said Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian.

"Increasingly, readers are demanding editorial content tailored to the time and place of their choosing, rather than to artificial deadlines dictated by old print production schedules.

"G24 — which will draw heavily on the continuously updated website — will be a perfect quick read for the journey to work, or home in the evening."

Two weeks ago, The Guardian announced a "web first" strategy that will put news from foreign and business correspondents online before it appears in the paper. They also said they will expand their print and online presence in the U.S.

Update: Josh points out that Spain's El Pais is already doing this.

>Guardian offers downloadable news digest [The Guardian]

(Thanks, Jim!)

The New York Times is planning to put ads on its Business section fronts, Executive Editor Bill Keller says.

“It’s a competitive world out there,” Mr. Keller said in response to a question from a staff member. He said he was hesitant about the practice, but if given the choice between running such ads and losing reporting positions, he would keep the reporters.

>Times to Sell Ads on Front of Business Section [The New York Times]

A piece in the American Journalism Review chronicles how newspapers are experimenting with their front pages in an effort to respond to the realities of the cable news/broadband age and stanch the circulation bleeding. Even the New York Times and Washington Post are scaling back the story count, tweaking the story mix and promoting the rest of the paper more.

Like the Post, the New York Times has reduced its front-page story count. Richard Berke, assistant managing editor for news, says that makes the page more reader-friendly. The refer box, meanwhile, “gives people a sense of the assortment of stories inside the paper.” Those are probably the biggest cosmetic changes on page one, he says, “but we also struggle every day to deal with the Web, and how our stories are already on the Web site.”

Newspapers, Meo says, “are trying a million things, but in terms of growing readership in the core paper, we just don’t see it.” At best, he says, such efforts “are slowing the decline” of newspapers.

Also in AJR, editor Rem Rieder gives the NYT some grief for its first-day approach to the Zarqawi news.

>Remaking the Front Page [American Journalism Review]
>Pre-Internet Thinking [American Journalism Review]

In honor of their World Cup victory over Poland, some Ecuadorean front pages to feed your futbol jones.

In the comments of the last post, Josh referenced the NY Post's inside Zarqawi spread. That would be this one:

Also, the headline on their editorial? "Abu Musab al-Corpse."

When putting that big news story on your front page that happened early enough in the cycle that all your conscious readers know about it, you’ve got several options.

You could go straightforward, telling people what they already know:

You could whoop it up:

You could try to spin the story forward:

You could ask one of the burning questions:

You could focus on how it happened:

Or you could just recognize that, really, it’s all about the Brangelina:

Al-Zarqawi’s obviously the big news today. Bulletins started moving between 12:30 and 1 a.m. Pacific, so a few Western papers were able to get the news on A1 this morning. Here’s who made it (The Normal Caveat: Some other papers may have been able to replate, but did so after they sent the Newseum their page):

In addition, West Hawaii Today and the Eugene, Ore., Register-Guard got teasers on A1.

I guess that, well, the devil made them do it.

Update: And this illo by Chris Morris that ran downpage A1 in the Las Vegas Sun is just awesome.

The World Editors Forum is well under way in Moscow. Much posting is going on at the Editors Weblog and our pal Robb Montgomery is taking pictures and video blogging.

The Kansas City Star’s much-anticipated redesign, which hit some of the features sections a couple weeks ago (see here and here), reached the front page and the rest of the paper today.

Star Editor Mark Zieman has a Q&A here.

Aren’t you just using color and glitz to attract people who don't like to read?
No. If you hate Pepsi, putting it in a pretty can won’t make you drink it. It’s the same with non-readers and newspapers. Instead, we're trying to make the paper more useful - and easier to use - for people who already read us. We already have more than 1 million readers every week - but not every day. We're working to make our paper more relevant, enticing and informative for our occasional readers. We actually believe that comes from better news content, not a prettier design. But if we can give you both, why not do it?

There’s a Web page about the redesign here, with links to, among other things, a Flash slideshow of new pages, a list of the Top 10 changes, an audio slideshow of the new press operations and some PDFs of pages from the 20-page special section on the redesign.

Garcia Media consulted on the job, with Kelly Frankeny as the art director. Jeanne Meyer, Managing Editor for Visuals and New Initiatives, and Tom Dolphens, AME for Art and Design, led the team from the Star.

Mario Garcia penned a column for the special section.

Foremost in our thinking:

1. Catering to readers in a hurry, like you and me. So we have worked hard to create navigational systems that start on Page One. We know that you may have time only to scan the headlines in the morning, so Page One eases that process. We also know that readers appreciate when we alert them to related stories or coverage online, so we will systematically do that as well. The Star, like all modern newspapers, moves into an era for readers who are tech savvy and live in a multimedia world.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the first documented case of AIDS. Some papers marked the moment in Sunday’s paper. Beautiful job by the Chron (and some good stuff online, as well, including groundbreaking reporting from the archives by the late Randy Shilts).

But can we please call a moratorium on cramming a bunch of images into headline words? Please?

(Thanks, Bo!)

Like Britain, a similar exhibition is travelling around Spain, looking at the last 40 years of the country’s history — a period in which Spain moved from dictatorship to democracy — as shown on the nation’s front pages. El Mundo has a story and an online gallery of 40 pages. (Interestingly, the page El Mundo picked for 1975 is not Franco’s death but the country’s first nude beach).

>Lección de Historia [El Mundo]
>La Historia a través de la prensa [El Mundo]

(via Maquetadores)

The British Library has a new exhibit (opened by the Queen!), “Celebrating 100 years of the British Newspaper.”

This new exhibition looks at the growth and development of the last 100 years of the British Newspaper through a selection of 200 front pages. You will discover how the stories which make the front page are reported on, and how and why they are selected by editors and journalists. You will also appreciate why newspapers, throwaway items by day, are a treasure-trove of social history.

Also, the BBC’s Newsnight held a vote on the most memorable front page of the last century. The Daily Telegraph’s front of Sept. 12, 2001 was the winner.

The Guardian’s relaunch issue has won a rare and much-coveted Black Pencil Award (only two were awarded this year) at the D&AD Global Awards in London. The Black Pencil (or “Gold Award”) is only awarded for work that “breaks the mold or sets a new standard of excellence in creativity.”

Past Black Pencil winners include Wieden+Kennedy UK for the Honda Grrr ad (2005) and Apple for the iPod (2002) and Jonathan Ive’s colored iMacs (1999).

Congrats to Art Director Mark Porter and The Guardian crew!

Yesterday’s NYT has a piece on William Dean Singleton, new owner of (among others) the San Jose Mercury News (and a bidder for the Philly papers).

These days, Mr. Singleton no longer looks at distressed properties. Instead, he is pouring $500 million into new printing presses around the country and building airy newsrooms for his employees.

Indeed, Mr. Singleton intends to make a showcase of The San Jose Mercury News, in the heart of Silicon Valley, as a kind of laboratory for how to meld print with the Web. He is so excited about the prospects that he plans to buy a home in the Bay Area, while keeping his primary residence in Denver.

"All the issues we're dealing with as an industry happened first in San Jose and are more dramatic in San Jose," he said in an interview. "And if you begin to find solutions to the dramatic changes that are going on there, you've found them for all newspapers."

Last week’s much-discussed edition of the Independent guest-edited by Bono sold more than 70,000 extra copies — a bigger spike than after last summer’s London bombings.

“We did very good PR, the front page attracted people and the subject matter was in keeping with our readers’ interests and concerns,” [Independent Editor Simon] Kelner said.

Saturday was Election Day in New Orleans, so the Times-Picayune decided to cast the movie.

PDF here, if you want to read all the text.

(Denzel won, by the way.)

(Thanks, Danny!)

The Observer last week won Newspaper Design of the Year in the 2006 Newspaper Awards, a contest honoring UK and Irish newspapers.

The Observer relaunched as a Berliner in January with a Mario Garcia-led redesign.

Today’s Independent was guest-edited by Bono. Half the revenue from the edition will be donated to the Global Fund to Fight Aids. RED is a “brand created to raise awareness and money for the Global Fund by teaming up with the world’s most iconic brands to produce RED-branded products.”

The cover is by British artist Damien Hirst.

A bit reminiscent of the Polish papers last fall using their front pages as a vehicle to protest repression in Belarus.

(Thanks, Malcolm!)

Check out the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s 22-part narrative, “Through Hell and High Water,” on what happened inside two New Orleans hospitals in the days after the levees broke last fall.

It is an intimate portrait of medical professionals who faced unprecedented conditions and acted heroically to keep their patients alive. It is also the tale of daring rescuers who came to the aid of those the government had abandoned.

(Thanks, Kenny!)

That noise from the upper Midwest this weekend was the Detroit Free Press staff exulting in the first full Sunday paper they’ve produced since 1989. Under the 1987 Joint Operating Agreement with the Detroit News, the papers produced combined weekend editions, with the Freep producing Saturday’s A1 and the News controlling Sunday’s front. That changed when Gannett (owner of the News) bought the Free Press from Knight Ridder and sold the News to the MediaNews Group. Now each paper has a separate Saturday edition and the Freep has sole custody of Sundays. Still, some Freep folks apparently aren’t happy that “Detroit” has been dropped from the Sunday nameplate.

SportsDesigner has the Freep’s new Sunday sports section.

Inspired by artist Laura Fields and critic John Berger, Mark Kingsley has a fascinating meditation (with many examples) over at Speak Up on the “collision” between advertising and news images. It’s a collision exemplified by Page A3 of The New York Times, where there’s usually a fairly in-depth international piece and a photograph. Combine that with the ubiquitous Tiffany’s ad in its traditional upper-right spot, and you get a juxtaposition that often creates an entirely new narrative about society, art, economics, politics and culture.

My early exposure to this “way of seeing” was first viewing the [“Ways of Seeing”] BBC series as a freshman in college, and then as a junior designer in New York. Even though they didn’t speak the language of intertextuality, the art directors above me often would tweak layouts whether one image was “looking” at an image across from it or not. And from that moment on, inspired, I began collecting magazine covers based on their overall narrative effect.

So ever since seeing Child’s Play, I’ve looked at page three of the New York Times differently: always looking for a correspondence between the narratives of news photo and Tiffany ad, a correspondence between text and image, or simply a correspondence of shapes.

Thanks to Martin Huisman, here are some more De Morgen pages, including the books section, music, film and theater reviews and "Bis," which is "the story of the day."

Today's lesson: How to use the "Hot L" device in an uninentionally humorous manner. (via Hit and Run)

Thanks to the good folks at the Merc, here's their coverage today of the purchase of the paper by MediaNews. You'll note that Page One riffs off the March page when McClatchy put the Merc on the block. To download a 4-page PDF of these pages, click here.

MediaNews is acquiring four fomer Knight Ridder papers, including the San Jose Mercury News and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. It's a complex deal involving trades with Hearst (I don't think the castle is part of the deal).

MediaNews will purchase the Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, and Hearst will acquire the Monterey County Herald and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Under a separate agreement between Hearst and MediaNews, Hearst has agreed to trade the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Monterey Herald to MediaNews in return for an equity investment in MediaNews' non-San Francisco Bay Area assets.

The deal creates a powerful new media giant in Northern California by combining ownership of MediaNews' eight local daily newspapers with Knight Ridder's Mercury News, Contra Costa Times and Monterey County Herald. MediaNews also is acquiring Knight Ridder's smaller Bay Area publications, such as the Palo Alto Daily News group and the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers.

"While McClatchy may be buying Knight Ridder, we're getting the flagship and the crown jewel of Knight Ridder,'' MediaNews Chief Executive Dean Singleton told the Mercury News staff Wednesday. Singleton was joined by Knight Ridder CEO Tony Ridder. "I know how much Tony loves this newspaper. We will continue to make him proud as we go forward.''

>Singleton of Mercury News: 'We're getting the crown jewel' [San Jose Mercury News]

De Morgen, a Belgian broadsheet, redesigned and switched to Berliner format today. Mario Garcia, who did the paper's last redesign in 1994, headed up the project with De Morgen art director Martin Huisman and Christian Fortanet of Garcia Media's Spain office.

The newspaper, which in 2004 won Europe's Best Designed Newspaper in the category 'national newspaper,' invested €100 million in a new printing plant that is capable of "waterless" printing, which supposedly makes for better reproduction. The press is also capable of printing color on every page, which Garcia took advantage of.

I am convinced that readers can never get enough color, but it is a matter of how one utilizes it. With a brand new printing machine, a new format, and the ability to do color on each page, DeMorgen was the ideal candidate for a total colorization or "wallpapering" effect, as I call it. Each of the section fronts is wallpapered with one of the five colors in the palette, but logos always appear against a white background, a reversal of years doing the opposite. Remember, we all colorized logos simply because we were not sure how color would ever reproduce, so the logo area was contained and a safe haven for a "touch of color" without the risks of overexposure. And, of course, this still applies today. If your color press is NOT good, then don't try color wallpapering at home, please.

But, undoubtedly, this is the beginning of what I see as greater and more efficient and experimental era of colorization for newspapers.

The typography: Gotham for section headers and the flag, Capitolium for headlines and body text, and ITC Conduit for summary decks, photo credits, graphics, etc.

Lode Vermeiren at his new Jumping Shark weblog has a lot of good coverage, including before and after comparisons and a nice review of the paper after looking at the real printed version.

The new lay-out consists of five columns per page, with quite a lot of whitespace. Sometimes photographs or illustrations span multiple columns, up to seven columns on one of the main stories. The headers of the different sections are clearly distincted from the content, and are quite clear. One thing I dislike is the lack of spaces in the section titles of more than one word, for example, "cultuur&media" (culture&media) versus "cultuur & media". Sure, it may be trendy (and I have to admit that I have used this in some of my own designs as well), but I'm afraid it is a trend that won't really last. All in all the design is really well balanced, and I'm ever more convinced of the Berliner format versus tabloid, which always feels crowded, making me tired just looking at it.

The free daily amNew York launched a redesign today. It's a collaboration between between Chris Sabatini, amNY's design director, and Steve Cavendish, art director/graphics editor at the Chicago Tribune. Steve writes:

For those not familiar, amNY is a joint venture partially owned by Tribune. They produce a free, daily newspaper (M-F) and a website, amny.com, with help from Newsday (they print on Newsday's presses and the site is supported on the back end by Newsday.com). It's been a big success so far. The daily draw is a little more than 300K, 2/3 of which are distributed in Manhattan. It's got a strong local focus and they do a good job of aggressively covering the city, particularly transit issues.

The redesign attempts to do a few of things:

1) Clean up the type a bit. We switched from several cuts of Swiss and Myriad to Benton Sans (with Stainless used in some architecture).

2) Move people to the site. There's something on every page, whether it's a standing element, a folio or a refer to a specific web package, to drive folks to the web.

3) Control the use of color. On most days, they've got color capability for 75% of their pages. We built in color on the pages and developed a limited palate that will give readers a lot of color, but not haphazardly.

And while they have a little help from Newsday on the production and managerial end, it really is a shoestring of a staff putting out the paper every day. There's Chris plus two other designers, but, really, everybody does pages. One of the things that impressed me the most is that most of these folks have little or no design training, but they've picked things up and done a great job.

Stay tuned this week for more details on redesigns from North Carolina to Belgium.

Stephen Komives, creator of the much-discussed "Enough Already" page, sends along a response:

I removed the Enough Already page yesterday from NPD. It seemed to have reached the end of its useful shelf life.

It wasn't a very good page, really. Lots of unnecessary white space, a big 'To Be' verb in the headline. Not good.

It's been an interesting week. The "handout" obviously touched a nerve. It's clear the design community is divided over the issue of knock-offs, and it's a topic worthy of further discussion, and maybe some guidance from organizations such as SND.

The stuff I wrote in the handout was way over the top. It was meant to be satirical and provocative. I doubt anyone would have taken notice if it hadn't been. I felt it important to call attention to this issue in a dramatic way.

If this leads to a little more soul-searching before we launch into another Wanted Poster motif, maybe that's good.

But to the good people at the Daily Breeze, who got their feelings hurt, I apologize. They've gone to lengths to explain themselves and haven't shied away from the dialogue, and they have my respect. If someone from their staff would like to attend the SND workshop here in August, I'll pay the registration fee. I mean that.

It's not for me to judge them or anyone.

I heard from a lot of people this week. Some trying to point out more egregious examples, others confessing to having knock-off skeletons in their own closets, others chastising me for adopting a holier-than-thou posture.

I'm not really sure how to respond to any of it. I would never claim to be a better designer or more original thinker than the rest of y'all. Or pretend to be a watchdog for the industry, either. We know in our hearts what's right and wrong and when we are crossing an ethical line. My only advice would be not to deny yourself the wonder of new discovery, whether through design or another medium.

Let me also apologize to Starbucks. They're one of the nation's top companies in terms of employee satisfaction, they provide health benefits to their part-time employees (impressive), they offer a wide variety of coffees. (After this week, I think I need to keep my options open: I might just be America's next barista.)

For now I have to get back to work. The dreaded hurricane-season preview guide is upon us, for the upteenth time. But now there's pressure. I'm thinking, crap, I better come up with something different. I have a feeling people will be watching.

- Stephen Komives

And, for something completely different, comes this comment from "chou" on the post about the Daily Mail's Guardian ripoff:

Speaking as a UK national newspaper production journalist... ladies, gentlemen .. relax!
Over here we tend not to get too hot and steamed up because a competitor has nicked one of your ideas.. it's seen as a form of flattery. And every single paper on Fleet Street (the single most competitive newspaper market in the English speaking world) has done it. The Daily Mail is especially culpable - but they are probably more admired for not letting pride come before product. See a great idea, use it. I know the guys on the Guardian's G2 section had a good laugh about it the next morning and just saw it as confirmation that it was a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed. In the United Kingdom, these examples of borrowing raise nothing but a chuckle .. certainly not angst-ridden handwringing and cries of woe about what the world has come to.

We try not to get our heads stuck that far up our arses. Or asses...

The Times-Picayune of New Orleans and the Sun Herald of Biloxi, Miss., have won the Pulitzer Prize for public service with their Hurricane Katrina coverage. The Times-Pic staff also won in the breaking news category. Huzzah!

Update: Also, Todd Heisler of the Rocky Mountain News won the feature photography prize for his Final Salute story (download a PDF of the 24-page section here or see jpgs of the pages here), and the Dallas Morning News staff won the breaking news photography prize for their Hurricane Katrina coverage.

Stephen Komives, design editor at the Orlando Sentinel, came up with the above "page" (pdf here) after yet another instance of similar pages cropped up today:

Komives' advice (forgive me for copying his red type):

1. DON'T DO IT.
If you don't see the endless visual possibilities that design has to offer and take joy in the craft because of that aspect of it, you might be in the wrong field. Maybe try Starbucks?

2. DON'T DEFEND IT.
Please don’t encourage bad behavior. It feeds the cycle. We would never think to support artists or writers who graft work from others.

3. DON'T BET ON GETTING A JOB WITH IT.
A liar is caught faster than a one-legged man. We all see what everyone else is doing and where ideas originate. You can’t take someone else’s idea, especially a highly original one, and expect to successfully pass it off as your own.

4. WE'RE WATCHING YOU. REMEMBER THAT.

Update: As regards the Daily Breeze page above, Jennifer Berta of the Daily Breeze said at Visual Editors:

We got permission from the Atlanta paper to pick up the package in its entirety but tweaked it for style and added some local numbers. They sent us the story and we found a similar graphic. We saw it and thought it was relevant information to what's going on in our communities with hundreds of workers and students marching into the 110 freeway and many more immigration stories to come.

Speaking of just plain stealing ...

(via Visual Editors)

Now that the "Hot L" treatment has made its way from Montreal, Baltimore and Bakersfield into the much-watched Virginian-Pilot, look for this kind of thing on a front page near you!

I think this is nicely done. As Alan pointed out to me, this is an interesting counterpoint to the plagiarism conversations. There's stealing, and then there's using ideas you find elsewhere, adapting them to serve your readers. Sometimes a thin line, perhaps?

Katharine Seelye has a good updater in tomorrow's NYT on the state of the Times-Picayune and the Biloxi Sun Herald seven months after Hurricane Katrina struck.

At CC's coffeehouse on Magazine Street one morning last week, there were so many people absorbed in that day's Times-Picayune that the scene looked like a commuter train.

"These writers are energized and passionate," said Angele Thionville, 34, a mother of three boys, as she glanced up from the paper. She was not a big fan of The Times-Picayune before Katrina, she said, but now if she misses the paper one day, "I feel so out of touch."

While much of the country has moved on from coverage of Katrina, considered the largest natural disaster in modern American history, both The Sun Herald and The Times-Picayune remain all Katrina, all the time. For their role in covering and enduring the storm, both papers have received accolades, and next week both may well receive Pulitzer Prizes.

Previously: NewsDesigner.com Katrina coverage

The new free Baltimore Examiner tab dropped Wednesday, with a bigger circulation than the Baltimore Sun.

The design was developed by consultant Robb Montgomery, and elements of it have been working their way over the last couple of months into the other Philip Anschutz-owned Examiners in San Francisco and D.C. Robb writes:

Compared to recent flashy redesigns, The Examiner represents a kind of un-design 'redesign' — the goals we developed were based on a core desire to produce an upscale daily news tabloid that works hard to provide daily intelligence in a magazine-style form. A free tabloid with an upmarket quality standard is a first for a daily in the U.S. It also meant we weren't going to be designing a paper that relies on gimmicks to be noticed.

All that matters is that the new design reveal the character of the new Examiner — smart, interesting and relevant to your life today.

When you look at the page examples shown online please keep in mind that these ARE the inside pages - the ones that usually don't get a lot of attention from newspapers when it comes to planning sophisticated daily packages around the way people are living their lives these days. That all of the inside pages can be well-designed is a true measure of the success of this redesign and presages the work to come.

The Library of Virginia has a beautiful little collection of old newspaper flags. (via Cameron Moll)

That's quite a, um, coincidence there! And it's sparked a bit of conversation at Visual Editors.

>Such a thing as design plagiarism? [VisualEditors.com]

David Kordalski sends details of a SND Quick Course planned for May 6 in Cleveland. Quite a fine line-up:

Want news pages readers can really sink their teeth into?
We’ve pulled together a great SND Quick Course faculty to help.

A1/NEWS DESIGN QUICK COURSE

Saturday, May 6 | Cleveland

Hosted by The Plain Dealer

FEATURED SPEAKERS

STEVE DORSEY, AME/Presentation, Detroit Free Press

JULIE ELMAN, Assistant Professor, Ohio University

TIM FRANK, DME Visuals/Creative Director, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

JOSEPH HUTCHINSON, Creative Director, Los Angeles Times

CHRISTINE McNEAL, Deputy Managing Editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

BILL GUGLIOTTA, Director of Photography, The Plain Dealer

EMMET SMITH, Designer, The Plain Dealer

More details here.

Here's some of this morning's French front pages.

Quebec daily Le Soleil will convert to tabloid format on April 24. Editor André Provencher told Le Devoir that the change "respects the genetic code of the newspaper and remains faithful to his tradition of quality, honor, distinction and professionalism."

News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has a new art director, Juan Varela reports. Here's an approximate translation:

A Spaniard designs the Murdoch empire

Alfredo Triviño (1977) is the new art director of future publishing projects at News International, the British empire of press tycoon Rupert Murdoch, and will be the one in charge of new projects in its big titles (The Times, Sunday Times, The Sun and News of The World) like new product launchings.

Triviño, who lives in London, was previously art director of Metro International, which publishes free newspapers all over in the world. One of their latest projects has been the changes in the Spanish edition, which begain in May of 2005.

News Corp. is rethinking its business and media strategy to adapt to the enormous change in the consumption and production of information and entertainment, a theme affirmed by president and founder Rupert Murdoch in recent speeches:

"Great journalism will always attract readers. The words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of journalism have to be brilliantly packaged; they must feed the mind and move the heart.".

This will be the task of Triviño.

Alfredo Triviño began his career at Diario de Navarra and later spent time at El Territorio de Misiones (Argentina). He passed through Marca, Colombia and Hong Kong. At the end of 2001 he was hired by the Vocento group to participate in the renovation of its regional newspapers until he was hired as art director for Metro International in London.

We've heard a lot lately about high-profile redesigns and sparkly new products in places like Tampa and Savannah and Bakersfield. But there's more going on out there than the latest Alan Jacobson or Mario Garcia joints.

Last month three small weeklies in Miami County, Kansas, the Miami County Republic, (5,000 circ.) the Osawatomie Graphic (3,000 circ.) and the Louisburg Herald (2,000 circ.) launched a new combined Weekend edition. It's aimed at younger readers and families who are moving into the county as Kansas City sprawl spreads south.

Publisher Greg Branson, a former assistant graphics editor and A1 designer at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, says "We're trying to give our readers the news and features coverage you would typically see from a metro, but focused on our specific region. ... It's been fun seeing the staff really rise to the occasion to put out a product most people wouldn't expect from a community newspaper."

Branson continues:

So far it's been a lot of fun. Weekend has been something that both our younger and veteran reporters have really enjoyed and it has allowed them to really stretch. In community newspapers, you don't often get a chance to do these kinds of stories — for example: regular long-form, issue-based news stories, or features about trends and things to do, or, for sports, preview stories and features that aren't just gamers.

From the beginning, we have been specifically targeting younger readers in the 16 to 45 age range. Our coverage area is outside the southern edge of the Kansas City metro area and is really growing. But more people moving here wasn't translating into more readers. Our traditional weeklies - focused on the communities, the city governments, club notes, births and obits, and sports - didn't appeal as readily to somebody just moving here. In fact, it informal discussions I had with some, it made them feel like outsiders because they didn't know the people the stories were about like the people who grew up here or have lived and worked here a long time.

So the idea behind Weekend is to produce an newspaper that won't ostracize our new residents, but instead introduce them to the area and the communities through issue-based stories instead of nuts-and-bolts stories. The response has been very positive from both our target market and from our long-time readers. We're also still publishing our three weeklies earlier in the week for our "traditional" readers.

For all the tabloid-skeptical designers, the response to our 30-inch (60-inch for those of you on metro presses) tab format has been overwhelmingly positive. By going to to the larger size, we actually have more ad inches to sell than if we stayed with our regular 25-inch page size. Also, since we're using two-different sizes of paper, it allowed us to keep a standard 11p column for all of our pubs — 6 col in our 3 weekly broadsheets and 5 in Weekend. That way we don't have to resize ads for different pubs, unless they're taller than 14 inches.

Producing something like this in a community newspaper setting isn't really any more difficult, you just have to be smarter with your resources. We made a commitment to the visual aspect by hiring a full-time photographer for the three papers, but that has cost me a reporter at one of the three papers. But other than that, it's the same as larger paper — we're often scrambling for visuals. We try to take the Joe Scopin (Washington Times early '90s SND big-time award winnner) approach to using what we have on hand when it comes to design. I'm doing some illos and some graphics, but overall we're trying to make use of handouts and whatever the reporters and photographer can shoot or grab when they're covering stuff. It's been fun to see the reporters start focusing on what visuals are going to go with their stories.

Tom Mangan: Why I'm not bailing on the Mercury News

The Guardian, which relaunched as a Berliner last fall and was named one of the World's Best-Designed Newspapers last month, was named Newspaper of the Year at the British Press Awards last night.

Alan Jacobson asks "If newspaper markets are so different, why do most papers look so much alike?"

Newspapers crave innovation but rarely deliver. Every few years a newspaper decides it's time to redesign. They go even further, claiming they've "re-imagined" and "re-engineered" the newspaper. The results more often than not?

Nada.

Newspapers squander this opportunity to re-invent themselves because their "unique" solutions are often clones from other papers.

Here, courtesy Jonathon Berlin, are pages from today's Mercury News on the Knight Ridder sale. Jonathon says they've been getting a lot of reader comment.

Update: Doug wants to see PDFs of the pages. To download a 6-page, 812KB PDF, click here.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Hey, I wonder what the best-designed newspapers in Estonia were for 2005." Thanks to Vahur Kalmre, you've come to the right place. They are SL Õhtuleht (circulation over 20,000) and Järva Teataja (circulation under 20,000). There were four categories in this year’s competition (overall design, front pages, news pages and feature pages). Fourteen newspapers entered 141 entries altogether. The jury also gave out 5 gold awards, 3 silver awards and 5 "Ohoo!" special awards.

Ohoo to all the winners!

(Thanks, Vahur!)

Knight Ridder has agreed to a deal in which it will sell itself for $4.5 billion in cash and stock to McClatchy, which owns the Sacramento Bee and Minneapolis Star Tribune, among others.

Some relief in the Knight Ridder universe tonight, I suspect. Except perhaps in St. Paul.

Update: McClatchy says it will sell St. Paul, the San Jose Mercury News, both Philly papers and 9 others. E&P also says the Newspaper Guild's effort to buy some papers "no longer seems farfetched."

>Knight Ridder Newspaper Chain Agrees to Sale [The New York Times]

The Savannah Morning News (Morris Communications, 52,422 daily) introduced a redesign Monday. Designers Josh Jackson and Francie Krantz came through with pages. Francie also posted some details here.

The typography is Caslon FB, Relay, Miller for body copy and Big Caslon for section flags.

A couple of new inside pages:

So let's say, hypothetically, that Newspaper X were to launch a free, youth-targeted tabloid. And let's say that on the same day, cross-town rival Newspaper Y were, hypothetically, to devote 86.2 percent of its available Page One news space, more than any other major American broadsheet, to say, hypothetically, the Academy Awards. Would that be a coincidence? I mean, hypothetically?

The St. Petersburg Times relaunched its previously weekly tbt*/Tampa Bay Times tabloid as a weekday publication today. AME/Presentation Patty Cox was good enough to send some pages. She e-mails:

The designers working on the publication are Chris Kozlowski, who joined our staff in January from the Arizona Republic, Ellen Freiberg and Adam Newman. We tweaked the styles we used in the weekly publication to give the daily a newsier look and feel.

The Times also launched a redesign of its online portal, tampabay.com, which is a gateway to the daily paper, tbt and several other company publications.

Meanwhile, a judge ruled Friday that, pending a trial, the Times can continue to use the current name "so long as the 'tbt*' is seven times larger than the 'Tampa Bay Times.' " But they cannot use "Tampa Bay Times" name alone in the nameplate. The Tampa Tribune, which holds the trademark on "Tampa Times" is suing the St. Pete Times to stop the paper using "Tampa Bay Times." The ruling maintains the status quo, but as Times media critic Eric Deggans points out in his blog, the judge also said there's a "substantial likelihood" the Tribune will prevail at trial.

Previously: St. Pete Weekly Tab to Go Daily

Here are some more pages of the Bakersfield redesign. (Thanks, Bill!)

Design editor Glenn Hammett was good enough to send along an insider's perspective:

The basic structure of the section fronts consists of the flag area (generally used for short refers with some visual element), the color area down one or both sides, which we have come to call "The Paint" (can contain short but interesting stories or longer refers), and the white area in the center of the page (usually harder news stories presented in a more traditional manner). The dominant image on the page is usually in this white area, but be up in the flag area. It all depends on what’s available and what works. Though it is a fairly simple structure, it requires a lot of flexiblility and attention to detail to make it work. It is so dependent on what images are available that we can’t really plan what is going in what position ahead of time. We basically throw all of the elements on the page and start moving them around and scaling them up and down until we find the combination that works best.

Because there is so much going on with photos and color, we have kept the typography very simple. Dutch for the body type, Poynter for the heads and Mercury for special heads and labels.

The implementation of the design was chiefly overseen by myself and Assistant Managing Editor Steve Mullen. Billy Simkins and Bill Ramsey design most of the news fronts and Mike Borjon, Kent Kuehl and Carol Duran design most of the feature pages.

The Bakersfield Californian launched its redesign today. Consultant Alan Jacobson worked on the project.

Californian Executive Editor Mike Jenner writes:

When we embarked on this project, we set out some important goals.

First, we wanted our front page to be striking — even arresting. The new look involves design techniques more commonly found in magazines than in most newspapers, but quality photographs and the ability to print great color are two of our strengths. We think the new approach makes the page more visually appealing.

Second, we wanted to address the issues of time-starved readers. More and more readers tell us their lifestyles are busier than ever before. Many aspects of this design address this reality.

The newspaper's online version redesigned as well. The site stopped running AP content in November, as E&P writes:

Bakersfield.com also will continue to expand its roster of blogs and community journalism. The new Current Affairs blog, begun Feb. 9, is designed to direct readers to particularly insightful or interesting coverage of national issues, partially to fill a hole left when the site stopped running Associated Press content in November. Owens experimented with dropping the AP stories in order to focus on local coverage. After receiving only one complaint about the change, the paper dropped their contract with the AP, effective today.

Although the Current Affairs blog has started out slow, with only three entries in its three weeks, Owens expects it to pick up as a portal to outstanding big-issue coverage "from The New York Times to a paper in India" rather than the "generic content" provided by AP. The blog, like several others on the site, will be run by Steve Swenson, who Owens expects to contribute much more frequently once things have calmed down after the redesign.

>Welcome to the new Bakersfield Californian [Bakersfield Californian]
>What do you think of the new Californian? [Bakersfield.com]
>Welcome to the new Bakersfield.com [Bakersfield.com]
>Bakersfield Californian Rolls Out Web Redesign, Sans AP [Editor & Publisher]

The Society for News Design contest judging is done for the year, and they've announced the winners of the World's Best Designed Newspapers portion (which was actually judged last week). There are only two this year:

The Guardian, London, U.K. daily, circulation: 395,000
Rzeczpospolita, Warsaw, Poland, daily, circulation: 180,000

Press release is here.

In the main contest, there were, for the first time in 25 years, no gold medals awarded. The 1,055 1,128 other winners include 46 50 silvers and seven nine Judges' Special Recognition Awards. The 10 papers with the most awards, in alphabetical order, are: Boston Globe, El Mundo, Hartford Courant, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Plain Dealer, Publico, San Jose Mercury News, South Florida Sun Sentinel and Toronto Star.

St. Pete Times media critic Eric Deggans has a feature in today's paper on Mario Garcia and his "reimagining" of the Wall Street Journal, which will launch a redesigned and narrower paper next year.

"It's basically a rethinking . . . (according to) how people receive information today," Garcia said later, his Cuban accent flavoring his words. "Everything is on the table. How many sections? How much fusion with the Internet? Page-by-page, section-by-section, we are doing an absolute autopsy of the newspaper."

Journal managing editor Paul Steiger will drop only a few tidbits about the new design, including a liberal sprinkling of Web addresses and online information, an index to individuals appearing in the newspaper and a possible fashion section.

Garcia reasons that an audience raised on cable TV and the Internet needs a more portable, navigable newspaper.

"In five years, you will hit a generation of readers who don't remember life without the Internet," said Garcia, a 59-year-old father of four who enjoys youth-oriented tabloids such as the Times' tbt. "People who are coming from . . . the screen of the Internet are used to reading within the confines of a smaller place and transfer more quickly to the tabloid."

U.S. newspapers make most of their revenue from advertising, where clients are charged by the size of each ad. So a move to tabloid would shrink the size of full-page ads, cutting revenue by 22 percent, Jacobson said.

"There's not a publisher in the world who will accept a 22 percent hit on ad revenues," Jacobson said. "I love Mario, but he's a (B.S.) artist. He calls these things compacts, but a rose by any other name."

>His mission: to redesign with today's readers in mind [St. Petersburg Times]

The St. Petersburg Times is taking its young-adult-aimed free weekly tabloid, tbt* (aka "Tampa Bay Times") to Monday-Friday publication starting March 6. The Times says it "will include concise versions of the day's local and national news, with an emphasis on sports, consumer features and entertainment." The tab, which began publishing in September 2004, will be 40 pages and circulate 40,000 copies Monday through Thursday. The Friday edition will be bigger, with a pull-out entertainment section, and will be available all weekend.

This move has prompted the Tampa Tribune to file a federal lawsuit, claiming that the paper's name infringes on their trademark of The Tampa Times, an afternoon paper that merged with the Trib in 1982.

"After years of trying and failing to sell newspapers successfully in Tampa, St. Pete has chosen deception as a strategy for convincing Hillsborough residents to read a Pinellas County newspaper," the lawsuit says. "Instead of adopting a mark that identifies its own product, St. Pete seeks to associate its product with plaintiffs' well-known and historically rich mark, The Tampa Times."

Update: Times AME/Presentation Patty Cox e-mails (and Zach points out in the comments) that the Times still publishes a Tampa edition. Didn't mean to imply otherwise, just that the initiative was eventually scaled down, but I'll concede I may be misremembering that (I'm getting so, so old). The Times A1 is still zoned for Tampa, the extent depending on the news, and the flag is stacked, with "St. Petersburg" smaller and "Times" played up. And the Tampa local section is significantly different. Also, the Times settled the Times of London suit in 1996 by agreeing to pay the Times of London a $12,000 license fee for the right to use The Times for 99 years.

But back to the Tampa Bay Times, see also this blog post by Times media critic Eric Deggans.

Industry convention says such tabloids are a combination starter kit/laboratory for newspapers -- getting younger readers to consider a regular newspaper habit, while acting as an incubator for fresh approaches which can be imported to the mothership publication. Much as I love my friends who work at tbt*, I worry that such publications really encourage young readers to see newspapers as irrelevant to their lives outside of entertainment. That's not a perception which will help traditional newspapers improve their brand much.

Pace Gene Weingarten, the Dallas Morning News dared to scatter some shot around an opinion page Tuesday. And Norfolk did a little bit of education Wednesday.

(Thanks, Noel!)

Either Dick Cheney was taking pot shots in the direction of 15th and L, or the Washington Post was having a little fun with the buckshot on the cover of its Tuesday Style section.

Wiseguy Post columnist Gene Weingarten said in his online chat Tuesday:

"You wouldn't have seen that in any other paper in the country. The little ones wouldn't have thought of it and the big ones wouldn't have dared."

You'll note, however, that while poor, naked Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley got "peppered" pretty good, Al Gore gets off without so much as his cashmere wrinkled. Oh, that liberal media.

(Thanks, Choire!)

Speaking of non-traditional ad placement, Steve Dorsey points out that the above "Z-shaped" island ad ran in both Detroit papers and dozens of others last fall.

Last Sunday The Los Angeles Times debuted West magazine, which replaces The Los Angeles Times Magazine. LAT news design director Michael Whitley was kind enough to send along some pages and this Q&A with Times Creative Director Joseph Hutchinson, who designed the magazine.

It is not a redesign, it's a complete rethinking and reinvention of the magazine. The name West was chosen because it is a historic name at the Times - it was the magazine title in the late 1960s and early 1970s - and better reflected the editorial mission of the new publication.

Joe used Font Bureau fonts. Zocalo for headlines, Antenna for labels, captions, etc., and a new face for the body text named Kis Light. He completed the work in about six weeks.

Q. How did the design of the magazine evolve?

It was important to me that the design be unique and reflective of the editorial mission. Rick (Wartzman, the West editor) wanted a magazine with personality, a magazine with a unique voice, and most importantly a magazine that is rooted in California.

The editorial content was the inspiration for the design. I wanted a design that has a voice, a personality that is unique but could also have as much range as the stories we are telling. Like the features themselves, the design is a mix; it can be bold, it can be elegant, but it is always sophisticated. It is crisp but has a sense of flair.

Q. What is different about the use of photography and illustration in the new look?

The previous magazine was text heavy and would fit photographs in around the type. So at times they tended to be small with full pages of type on all sides. Our readers told us they love photography, so we are trying to use photographs to capture the imagination of the reader that picks up West. It is, after all, a magazine so the reproduction is much better. We want to take advantage of the printing quality to improve what we do with photos and illustrations, to do things you cannot do in a newspaper. It's one of the things that makes West different than the daily broadsheet.

Q. It seems like you're using a few pictures really well rather than just running everything you get.

We're editing the photographs very aggressively. That is on purpose. But we're still going to do photo essays. We are going to do unique fashion photography. We're running gallery photography. So it is quite different from what we've done in the past.

Along those lines, we want to work with the best photographers, and illustrators, in the world. The first issue included work by Damon Winter (LAT staff photographer), Annie Leibovitz, Kurt Iswarienko, Gary Kelley, Owen Smith, David Plunkert, Edel Rodriguez and Philip Burke to name a few. The design is built on the use of really beautiful and engaging visuals. We won't have to do a lot of tricks with the type because the visuals and the story content are so strong.

Q. The typography is all new....

It is all new. The type is elegant and sophisticated like the Los Angeles Times, but at the same time different than the Times - like a cool younger cousin. The fonts are a little edgy but still sophisticated. They have interesting details. They give the magazine its own personality. But it still feels like it should be a part of the paper.

The typography in the previous magazine was quiet - almost apologetic - for the great content. We felt like the volume needed to be turned up. We wanted the type to be confident. We're elevating the content of the magazine, and we wanted fonts that reflect that.

Q. Any other thoughts?

Above everything else, I wanted the magazine to be easy to read. Everything about the design comes down to engaging the reader. It was important to pace the content. So as you flip through it is very organized, but there are some surprises. I think that is what will keep people coming back to it week after week, they know what to expect but will still find that surprise.

More pages after the jump.

Well, this is new. On page A3 Monday, The Kansas City Star put an ad at the top of the page above editorial content. First time I've seen this done in a major daily newspaper, although something you see a lot of on the internets. It will reportedly be nearly a daily occurrence on page 3, 5 or 7.

(Thanks, Joy!)

El Tiempo, Colombia's largest circulation daily, launched a new design Thursday.

Some new pages:

It's a Garcia Media job, with Mario Garcia as chief project leader, along with Rodrigo Fino and Paula Ripoll. El Tiempo's art director is Beiman Pinilla.

Garcia redesigned El Tiempo in 1987, retouched it in 1995 and redesigned it again in 2000.

In 2006, El Tiempo introduces a "rethinking" for a newspaper that has become part of a 24/7 news operation, which includes radio, television, magazines, the Internet and, as of last week, news prompts via mobile telephones.

The new El Tiempo introduces a colorful navigator on page one, along with navigational devices thru every section, including those inside Book 1 and Book 2. A color palette consisting of five main earthtone hues is utilized for secondary readings, informational graphics and backgrounds. Scanners and traditional readers will find the new pages of El Tiempo easy to read, and the content easier to find.

Also, Garcia says, "We have created an entire system of 'secondary readings' for breakout elements to expedite reading. These are what I call internal navigators within stories to lead you into bio sketches, side stories, development of a process, chronology of an event, etc."

Here's one of the design manual's pages regarding "secondary readings."

Full Garcia Media release after the jump.

The folks at MGRedesign have posted a some details on the new agate typography at the Spokesman-Review. And they've posted some feature pages.

Also, some tweaks to the redesign and reader reactions are covered in several of the newspapers weblogs: Daily Briefing, Ask the Editors and News is a Conversation.

A lot of news yesterday. State of the Union, Alito, postal shooting. But in Atlanta, there was just one big story: Coretta Scott King. Here's how the Journal-Constitution handled it. Page One designed by ArLuther Lee, photo illustration by Jerome Thompson. Quotes page designed by Will Alford. Thanks for the pages to Mr. Kenny Monteith, AJC news design team leader.

Spotted at a supermarket in Portland. The Marketing Department's on the case!

Update: OK, Dorsey notes that the Freep has its own marketing-fu going.

But Samuel Alito's visit today to the D.C. offices of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) provided some sweet Times and Post-Intelligencer product placement!

Better get on the horn to D.C., Dorsey.

Here are some live pages from Monday's redesigned Spokesman-Review, with many thanks to Matt Mansfield.

Earlier
>Spokane's Redesign, Blogged (11/7/05)
>Spokane Redesign, a Sneak Preview (1/29/06)

The other big redesign this weekend was the Orlando Sentinel, which launched Sunday. AME/Visuals Bo Burton kindly sent along some before-and-afters.

Robb Montgomery did a video podcast from the scene with Bo, Stephen Komives and Cassie Armstrong (audio version here). There's also an online guide to the changes.

So here are some pages (new on the right) with some comments by Bo in italics.

Now that we have the speed read on the cover, there's no need for a 3/4 page index inside (it was called "Quick Read." Quick, yeah, right.) So A2 is now the "news lite" page in the paper, balancing out the heavier World & Nation report it faces.

This is my favorite thing about the entire redesign, because its a true new product. Sunday nights are dreadful for local designers (and reporters) because not much live news happens. You end up with lots of feature stories and festival coverage. So we decided that would be a day we throw everything we have at the most complex local story: How growth is changing the region. Crowded roads, crowded schools, disappearing environments, etc. We have a team of visual journalists dedicated to this section, which is planned about 6-8 weeks out.

(Some background on the business redesign here.)

All of our features sections have been completely revamped. While we still have A&E coverage inside every day, the fronts are focused now on specific themes and designed as a magazine in a broadsheet format every day. We also rolled the previously free-standing Sunday Travel section and Wednesday Food section into Good Living on those days.

The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash. (Cowles family, 96,614 daily/124,250 Sunday), launches a redesign tomorrow (they're also narrowing the web width). Here's the full-page guide that ran in today's paper. And Editor Steve Smith wrote a column about it, but if you're not a subscriber, fuggedabout reading it. The consultants on the job, MGRedesign, have been blogging a bit about it, and promise more later. They've posted a draft of the 57-page design style guide (35M pdf), which has page samples from prototypes. I've collected some of them here with some pre-redesign pages to give a peek at what the new paper will look like.

Here's the design philosophy from the style book:

The newspaper industry adopted a new standard size in 2000, and The Spokesman-Review is one of the last major newspapers in the country to convert to the smaller format. In technical terms, it's called a web-width reduction. What that really means is the width of two newspaper pages is 50 inches instead of 55.

The smaller size was first adopted by the industry because it requires less newsprint and so is less expensive. But the format also proved enormously popular with readers because it is easier to handle. We think our readers will appreciate the change.

The smaller size presents both a challenge and an opportunity.

The challenge: Developing a new overall design that will work in the smaller format but still improve overall readability.

The opportunity: Creating a cleaner, easier-to-read newspaper that makes better use of color, graphics, news briefs and alternative storytelling techniques while providing an enormous amount of news and information in the space available.

A design team led by Geoff Pinnock, senior editor for design and presentation, has been at work on the new look for most of 2005. The media consulting firm, MG Redesign, provided assistance. Readers got a hint of things to come earlier this year with upgrades to the 7 section on Friday and the debut of the HOME section.

Now comes the entire newspaper redesign. Think of this book as your guide to our look and feel, and keep these ideas in mind when designing pages:

Simplicity. Use fewer colors, fewer typefaces, fewer secondary photos. Let the content shine through.

Write strong headlines and cutlines. These are the most important words in your newspaper.

Focus on alternative story forms. Ask, "How could we tell this story in a new way?"

Use white space. Let it frame the best story on the page.

For the type geeks, the redesign uses Hoefler & Frere-Jones typefaces Mercury Text (body copy), Guggenheim (headlines, section flags, labeling), Chronicle Display (headlines), Whitney (bylines, cutlines, some headlines) and Whitney Condensed (listings, graphics)

The 7 and Home sections debuted last fall:

On Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 74 seconds after liftoff. Here are some front pages from that day and the next, culled mostly from the 7th edition of SND's Best of Newspaper Design book.

You can read the New York Times' front-page Challenger article here, the full Washington Post coverage of the disaster and its aftermath here and the Orlando Sentinel's account of the last hours of the Challenger here.

Chicago's RedEye made some changes to its design and structure in November, and Design Director Chris Courtney was kind enough to send samples and elaborate.

We had one goal in mind for the redesign when we set out. Get more RedEye into RedEye without necessarily adding more pages.

The publication has evolved quite a bit since its launch back in aught-2. When it started, RedEye was a quick read that gave you just enough info to be dangerous on a range of topics. It had personality and ambition but it hadn't had enough time to grow into anything. Three years later, it's tackling topics others publications have forgotten (i.e. Chicago Rape crisis series; Porch Collapse series, etc.), developing scores of RedEye personalities (i.e. Whizzer, the prognosticating pooch; Kyra Kyles, our local commuting column; Jason Steele, our gay sex columnist, etc.) and introducing Chicago to the Sudoku phenomenon. Not to mention Martin Gee's Sudoku Ninja (stuffed ninjas sold separately)

Some touches of the initial design, created by the uber-talented Mike Kellams, are still evident in the new look. We didn't want to change what RedEye felt like to people. But the original design sometimes held us back from a content perspective. Anyone in the business will tell you that's a bad thing.

So we mocked, fried, dried, stir-fried, deep-fried and broiled down what we had before. We took into careful consideration what we learned from our reader research. Tossed out a fair share of the paper on the bet that our new ideas could beat the old ones. Kicked the tires and set it free. Oh, and I prayed a little.

The process start to finish took three months. We could have made it happen in two.

Now the paper has pacing that didn't exist before, multiple spreads everyday that weren't possible before and more original RedEye content than ever.

The Kane County Chronicle of Geneva, Ill., (Shaw Newspapers, 14,324) redesigned on Jan. 19. (The Chronicle is a sister paper of the recently redesigned Northwest Herald.) Managing Editor Greg Rivara wrote:

In delivering a newspaper worthy of your time, we kept five words in mind:

Smart: The newspaper must challenge us to live better, as well as easier.

Reliable: You will not agree with everything you read. But we cannot give you reason to question if there is a motive behind the words.

Local: There continues to be a place for the Pinewood Derby, as well as that increase in garbage stickers. But local does not end when you cross the county line on your way to work or play. We understand that, too.

Useful: It is not enough for us to report the goings-on at city hall. We also must help with 15-minute meal suggestions, study tips for your 15-year-old, and a restaurant suggestion to help wash away a week of 15-hour days.

Fun: Life is hard. We need to appreciate the small victories. We should do so together.

Typographically, they got rid of Cheltenham, Franklin Gothic, News Gothic and Utopia in favor of Miller Headline, PoynterGothicText and Nimrod.

>Redesign reflects busy lives [Kane County Chronicle]

(Thanks, Renita!)

Four months after The Guardian's relaunch as a Berliner, Business Week weighs in. They are not fans.

The entire newspaper is set in a new font called "Guardian Egyptian." Not quite modern, not quite traditional, it strikes a middle ground between the quaint "Comic Sans" and the uninspiring "Clarendon." The previous graphic incarnation, developed in 1988, was much preferred, it had a certain cutting-edge look and the use of fonts, dividing lines, and pictures made almost any page in the newspaper a well-considered exercise in composition and typography. For the masthead, the italic Garamond font had a human quality and flair, and the extra bold Helvetica was a solid, modern, significant addition. This combination gave the paper and the brand authority, modernity, and a sense of place in the crowded British market.

The Guardian looked like no other newspaper. The traditional serifs and gothic fonts of papers such as the Times and the Telegraph were all remnants of the era of Victorian London, when they began. The Guardian broke this tradition; it made waves in society and gave us beautiful pages to look at. Now, with the uninspiring layouts and dull fonts, the Guardian seems to be saying "I give up, I can't keep up anymore. I need to sit down for a while."

Mario Garcia continues his march around the globe, on Wednesday unveiling the remade Sportstar, an Indian sports weekly published in Chennai by The Hindu. It's been redesigned and converted from a magazine to tabloid format.

N. Ram, the editor in chief, writes:

Our hope is that the radical design transformation, going hand in hand with editorial and production changes, will make your sports weekly more current, more up with the news and trends, more vibrant and varied, more informative and insightful, more fun to read. And it will be quicker to market.

The emphasis of the new design is on elegant, comprehensive, on-the-go packaging and presentation of feature articles and photographs of the highest quality. A new typeface that is young and bold (fonts drawn from the Stainless and Fairplex families), a vibrant architecture, better navigation and layering of stories, a clear and vibrant colour palette, and colour coding of all major sports are key features of the redesign aimed at making Sportstar elegant, exciting, and sportier, besides offering the advertiser better value and new opportunities.

From the Garcia Media news release (full text after the jump):

The Garcia Media team, with Annette Osterwald, from our Hamburg office, as art director, took The Sportstar and helped in its rethinking, working closely with editor Nirmal Shekhar and art director Brian Gaughan.

"The changes involved a total reevaluation of content, with special attention to navigation, and a color palette that is more in harmony with the Indian landscape," Mario Garcia, chief architect of the project said. "Annette and I tried to look at ways in which young sports fan could comb through the new Sportstar faster, guiding them to their favorite sport thru a color coding system."

>Sportstar reinvented [Sportstar]
>Sportstar dons a vibrant new look [The Hindu]

Steve Outing over at Editor and Publisher says that newspapers have constructed a "walled garden" around the print edition and that needs to change.

Some of his prescriptions: More teasers from the paper to supplemental online content, creation and print promotion of online discussion forums for stories and columnists, whacking back stock listings, revamping the classified business model.

You could make the argument that promoting all the great stuff available on a newspaper's Web site points out how weak the printed newspaper is — so let's not promote that fact. I'll argue just the opposite: By largely hiding what the newspaper staff is producing for the Web, the newspapers I reviewed show that they are stuck in a print mindset. They should be in thinking publish-everywhere, with each medium that they utilize feeding off and helping out the other.

>Let's Redesign the Print Edition [Editor & Publisher]

Sarah Franquet, design director at The Charlotte Observer writes:

If you looked at The Charlotte Observer's front page [Monday], you might have thought: "Jeez, the Carolina Panthers beat Da Bears, but they didn't have ANYTHING on their front page. How weird is that? What were they thinking?"

Here's what. We did a live spadea - which included a half page vertical wrapping the front page of the paper. It was risky, because our press folks had to set it up earlier in the evening, and we were doing it, win or lose. Wrapping the paper with a losing team would not have been ideal! But, fortunately, the Panthers won. We had designs for either scenario, a little more subdued for a loss. On the back of the flap, we ran photos of fans at parties throughout the game (elation, anxiety, more elation), and on the inside full page, we ran photos, a sports column, and info about the next opponent, Seattle. More coverage was then in the Sports section.

Haven't heard reader reaction yet, but in this Panther-crazed town we're expecting lots of positive feedback. We thought it would be fun to offer something different. What do you think?

Incidentally, there was some recent discussion of spadeas a bit down in this Visual Editors thread about the Orlando redesign, including some interesting examples out of Cleveland.

The Los Angeles Times is launching West Magazine, the replacement for the Sunday Los Angeles Times Magazine, on Feb. 5. Some design details:

The full-color weekly will feature a new typography created exclusively for West and a bold, crisp and clean look — designed by Los Angeles Times Creative Director Joseph Hutchinson — that will significantly improve content flow and pacing. The magazine's distinctive page layout will dramatically showcase eye-catching photography by Los Angeles Times and freelance photographers and illustrations by some of the best artists in the industry.

For the cover of West magazine, artist Jim Parkinson, who designed the nameplates for Esquire and Rolling Stone magazines, has created a new, modern nameplate similar to one of the versions used for the original West magazine.

The team responsible for The Guardian redesign has been nominated for the Designer of the Year, a top British design award. It's the first time an editorial project has been nominated.

Alice Rawsthorn, chair of the jury and director of the Design Museum, which runs the prize, said: "The team behind the Guardian redesign set out to create a model modern newspaper — and they succeeded.

"Unlike some other newspaper format changes, this was not just a shrink-to-fit. Every aspect of the paper was revitalised and reinvented. This is an extraordinarily innovative and intelligent way of addressing the commercial challenges of the newspaper industry."

«snip»

Mark Porter, the Guardian's creative editor, said: "One of the reasons that it is incredibly gratifying to be nominated is that the jury has acknowledged how much of our work is about usability. The most important aspect of the project was making the newspaper easy and enjoyable to read."

He paid tribute to the enormous team effort that had contributed to the redesign, and said he was delighted the Guardian was on such an "interesting and wide-ranging shortlist — part of the point of the award is that it encourages people to realise that design fundamentally affects the world around us".

Tim Porter notes that enticing readers with day-old news on Page One "is an ongoing challenge for newspapers and a hurdle that must be cleared if they are to fashion a new, relevant role in a world of instant headlines." He points approvingly to Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle treatment of the Abramoff deal.

I like it. I would have added another category - What it Means - and invited readers to participate online, but it's a good effort and a sign that the sacrosanct rules of how newspapers That Aren't The Times should play Page 1 news are finally changing.

Today's the day editors of newspapers who got caught out by bad information yesterday try to explain what went wrong. Jay Rosen rounds up some of the explanations. And L.A. Observed illuminates how the L.A. Times, for one, got it right with a memo from Assistant Managing Editor John Arthur:

1) we closed the paper at 11 [pm] with news that most miners were alive.

2) we stopped presses at 12:10 [am] when we heard that was incorrect -- all but one were dead.

3) Marcy Springer, Alex Brown and Michael Edwards led charge to retool the page with new story and art and we went in with a new front at 12:45 a.m.

4) Pressroom called back all trucks that had left. Thousands of papers were thrown out. We're awaiting final number.

5) As a result ALL printed copies of the paper in California had the correct, updated report. Delivery to subscribers was significantly delayed but complaints were minimal, says Circulation.

6) The NewspaperDirect fax paper, with its limited circulation in NY, DC and elsewhere, got the original front with the "miners alive" story. This front also was posted on some media websites and is being cited in stories today. We've pulled that PDF off the website and we are trying to get the actual front page up.

Thanks to everyone who made this happen. No paper looks as good as we do today.

>"Today, we fell short." vs. "I'm not seeing any obvious missteps." [PressThink]
>Times got mine tragedy into print [L.A. Observed]
>Newspapers Explain Why They Announced 'Miracle Rescue' [Editor and Publisher]
>Many Editors Continue to Defend Mine Rescue Reporting [Editor and Publisher]

The news cycle wasn't kind to papers east of the Mississippi last night. And I noticed that CNN didn't miss a chance to wave around the USA Today front with the outdated "12 miners survive" hed. Here's what some eastern papers look like this morning. (Note: It's possible some editions of these papers were updated after they made their front-page images for their web sites.)

Those of us out West had a scramble, but got it in.

And here's how The Kansas City Star changed between editions.

*Update: Atlanta's Kenny Monteith tells me that Journal-Constitution trucks and pressmen were called back in at 3 a.m. They printed a 23,000 run for street and convenience-store sales (below). The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette got an updated story into about 114,000 of their 256,000 press run.

The Charleston Gazette called people back in and got out about 15,000 papers with a replate (below), and E&P says The Boston Globe managed to get the story into about 50,000 copies, and trashed 30,000 with the outdated headline.

E&P also notes that the Philly Daily News had printed 120,000 copies with 30,000 to go when the word came, but kept printing "because a system shutdown for maintenance barred editors from changing the paper's content." Ouch. Looks like they, um, adjusted the version of the cover on the Daily News site, though.

The 43,000-circulation Duluth News Tribune was able to remake Page One for more than half their papers, and other editors took to their web versions today to explain the outdated print versions.

*Update2: From this AP photo found at speigel.de by Jan Kny , it looks like the Daily News was able to update. The Post, not so much.

I don't talk much here about online newspaper design, something that may change a bit in the coming year. To that end, I'll note that The New York Times has made, in my estimation, a smart move today by hiring Khoi Vinh as the new design director of nytimes.com. Vinh's NYC web design shop, Behavior, has done fine work for the Smithsonian, HBO, MoMA and, most notably, the recent redesign of The Onion.

He wrote today:

For me, as a provider of design consulting to clients on a limited basis, the difficult part of this work has been affecting change on the workflows, finding the opportunity to integrate the design solutions I’ve produced fully enough that the expressions are as aesthetically pleasing as the platforms. In short, I’ve been able to design, but I haven’t been able to art direct, and that’s one of the things that I hope I get the opportunity to tackle during my tenure at the Times.

It’s just one of the things on my list, though… I have grand visions of what can be done as the Design Director of The New York Times Online, but I also have a pragmatic view of what needs to be done in order to realize those visions: to make design work, especially in this position, will require dedicated labor, genuine diplomacy, judicious management and earning the respect of peers and colleagues.

So much of the innovation that goes into online design is invested in developing the platform itself, and probably not enough is invested into sustaining the platform with continued innovation in the presentation of content.

That kind of visual inventiveness is one of the reasons that Salon met with so much early praise for its design sensibility; they really did try and make the site feel appreciably different with each new feature story.

Which leads me to say that one thing I'd like to see on The Times is a lot more illustration. There's not enough of it on the Web to begin with, and using more of it at The Times would have a nice ripple effect, I think.

The Chicago Sun-Times will pull the plug on Red Streak, its three-year-old free tab, on Thursday. Sun-Times publisher John Cruickshank said there would be no layoffs.

Red Streak launched in October 2002, the same day the Chicago Tribune launched RedEye, a similar tab. Sun-Times editor John Barron said it was a defensive move, and when RedEye officially switched to a free publication in October 2005, Cruickshank said he was considering shutting Red Streak down. "The whole reason we (launched Red Streak) was to stop them from getting a foothold in the paid tabloid market, which they clearly haven’t achieved."

Robb Montgomery, a founding editor of Red Streak, has some thoughts and pages at his VisualEditors.com site.

Well, here's one way to give that movie review a big promo.

No wonder Ohio's air is so bad. There's a big-ass ape breathing all over everything!

(Thanks, R.C.!)

Update 12/15: Welcome, Kottke, Airbag and Romenesko readers! Please feel free to leave a comment, especially if you're of the non-newspaper-employee type of human. As one commenter has already pointed out, we sometimes become a "closed world" just yakking amongst ourselves. There's a lot of sentiment against this page from my fellow designers at the top of the comments. But one Romenesko writer said today, "Putting a big ape on the front of the Dayton paper may not be the answer to the woes of the newspaper industry but at least they're trying." One clarification: I don't think this was an actual paid advertisement for the movie. It's just a big device to alert people of the movie review in the features section. But perhaps that's a distinction that's lost on many average folks?

What say you, readers?

Update2: Some Dayton Daily News staffers have noted in the comments that single-copy sales bumped up on Wednesday. And John Hancock, the Daily News artist who designed the promo, has braved the comment fray and graciously explained how this page came to be. Thanks, John!

Update3: Courtesy of Mr. Hancock, for those of you who are bothered by the ape's "hooves," here is an earlier mockup of the page, before it was decided Kong's "feet" needed to be visible.

Here's the Nov. 28 edition of Vancouver's 24 Hours:

And here's today's Province, also of Vancouver:

Remember, everyone, "Mama says a pistol is the devil's right hand."

(Thanks, Bill!)

Last week, hurricane season ended. And good riddance to all that. So for the Nov. 30 papers, folks in newsrooms across the great state of Florida (motto: "Like California, only with bugs and New Yorkers;" it sounds better in Latin) approached it in varied and unique ways.

But someone didn't get the memo (I'm lookin' at you, Lauderdale).

(Thanks, O.I.T.!)

Poland's two largest newspapers, Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita, joined an Amnesty International protest against repression in neighboring Belarus on Wednesday and blacked out much of their front pages. An Amnesty ad on the bottom read "This is what freedom of speech looks like in Belarus."

The uncensored front pages ran on page 3 (see Gazeta Wyborcza's here) with news and commentary on humans rights abuses in Belarus.

>Polish Dailies Black Out Front Pages Over Belarus [Associated Press]

(Thanks, Tomek!)

Mexico's Grupo Reforma launched simultaneous redesigns of its three newspapers Sunday, Reforma (Mexico City), El Norte (Monterrey) and Mural (Guadalajara). Garcia Media Latinoamerica's Rodrigo Fino was the project leader, working with Paula Ripoll and Remigio Badano. Also involved were art directors and editors from the papers: Ricardo del Castillo, Reforma; Luz María Díaz de León Reyes, Reforma; Jose Grajeda, El Norte; Fernando Jauregui, Mural and Alejandro Banuet, El Norte. Update: Also, project manager Guillermo Toledo of Grupo Reforma. Apologies, Guillermo!

Fino writes:

But more than just a new aesthetic transformation, the three newspapers followed a meticulous 21-month process to rethink themselves totally, to become a part of a multi-platform environment, amplifying the definition of news. While stating firmly that print is here to stay, the three newspapers have also rethought all processes dealing with navigation, color use, and the methodology of making a reader’s journey thru each page faster and more meaningful.

Typographically,
Hoefler & Frere-Jones' Mercury Display and Mercury Text take over as headline and text faces, respectively, Font Bureau's Dispatch replaces Giza as an accent face, and the sans-serif face used in headlines, cutlines, bylines and such is Vonnes, which Font Bureau developed for Macromedia a while back.

Reforma's nameplate has been tweaked as well.

The Concord (N.H.) Monitor has redesigned. It was an in-house job and launched Nov. 8. Editor Mike Pride wrote about it in a Nov. 6 column.

Mark Travis, the Monitor's director of product development, has been the prime mover behind the redesign process. From the beginning, he has worked with a team of editors and reporters eager to rethink how the paper looks and what we put in it.

Making the new look work will require change all around the newsroom, but the leaders of this portion of the design - the part you'll see on Tuesday - have been Ric Tracewski, the news editor, Dan Habib, the photo editor, and Charlotte Thibault, our newsroom artist. Vanessa Valdes, a new editor with superb page design skills, came late to the process but made a big contribution to the new design. ...

The driving idea behind the design itself is to simplify. You'll see fewer logos and color splashes than in the Monitor you're holding in your hands. It is our stories, headlines and photographs that we want readers to notice, and we've tried to strip away any element that might distract from them. We've also simplified the standard devices of our design, opting for less italic type and the most readable type faces we could find.

And a picture from the redesign kickoff is evidence that bakeries need copy editors, too.

(Thanks to Vanessa Valdes for the images!)

The LA Times will lose about 85 newsroom jobs by the end of the year, L.A. Observed reports. Some will come from attrition and buy..., er, "a voluntary separation program," but some layoffs sound inevitable. At L.A. Observed (which you should keep an eye on), you can find memos to the staff from publisher Jeffrey Johnson and editor Dean Baquet.

*Update: Also, the Orlando Sentinel (owned, like the Times, by Tribune), says it will "eliminate a limited number of positions."

*Update2: A source tells me the Chicago Tribune will trim newsroom staff by 30 with buyouts. Also the Tribune-owned Daily Press in Newport News, Va., (88,500 daily, 110,000 Sunday) laid off eight today.

*Update3: Former Chicago Tribune reporter John Cook reported yesterday that:

There is no official buyout offer on the table, but section editors have been told to spread the terms--two weeks' salary per year of employment, maximum one year - and encourage interested parties to inquire. If that doesn't net enough savings, official buyouts will be announced. If that doesn't work, paper and personnel.

*Update4: A memo from Trib publisher David Hiller.

But we have also concluded that it will be necessary to eliminate some employee positions. We have tried to be as careful and thoughtful as possible. In many cases we will be able to eliminate positions that are currently open. The number of current employees whose jobs will be eliminated will likely be fewer than 100, spread across all of our departments.

*Update5: And 25 positions at the Trib-owned Hartford Courant.

I'm a bit behind on this, but London's Sunday Telegraph redesigned on Nov. 4, most notably ditching the old nameplate in favor of a Bodoni flag which Media Week says is reminiscent of the original 1960s style. The paper also shelved The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, replacing it with Stella, a women's magazine, and Seven, and arts and entertainment section.

Sarah Sands, The Sunday Telegraph's new editor, wrote an editor's note, which appears to be no longer online. BBC's Magazine Monitor summarized the note thusly:

» "I want to encourage intelligent writing, and to present it in an elegant fashion. I suppose you could call it brains and beauty."
» "'Seven' is the highest form of entertainment."
» "Our second magazine is 'Stella'. This is a journalistic spa: beautiful, calm, witty, transforming. If bathrooms have become modern temples, then 'Stella' is the pinnacle of bath time reading."
» "I want the Sunday Telegraph to be like your iPod - full of your favourite things."
» "Some Sunday papers are merely nasty habits. I hope you will buy the Sunday Telegraph because you love it..."

The scamps at Private Eye couldn't resist a send-up:

For me, a Sunday newspaper is like a bath bubble, floating in the air, smelling of perfume, with a picture of a woman in her knickers on the front page. And, just like a bath bubble, it should leave you transformed, fragrant, news-based and waspish. That's why you'll love our new magazine, 'Nutella' - it's creamy, chocolatey and easy to spread on your bread. Not to mention focusing on core news values around the world.

In short, my dream is that the Sunday Gnomegraph is like an iPod - full of old rubbish that you don't want to listen to.

"Papers that don't have to worry about making profits are starting from a different logic.

"If you're doing what's basically vanity publishing, you can do it in whatever shape you like. Commercially it makes sense to be broadsheet. Advertisers don't like tabloids — it is a fashion."

More pages after the jump.

Belgium's Le Soir converted from the Belgian format (about 15"x21") to Berliner and redesigned today (new front on the right). The daily will have three main sections (news/opinion, business/sports and culture/lifestyle) like the redesigned Le Figaro and Le Monde, and will have color on every page.

If you parlez the French, there's a guide to the redesign here and, for today at least, you can download a PDF of today's paper here for free.

*Update: I've learned the consultant on this project was Garcia Media, with Christian Fortanet as the art director.

More pages after the jump.

This just in from the Los Angeles Times:

To: The Staff
From: Dean Baquet

I am pleased to announce that Joe Hutchinson has been named Creative Director of the paper, a newly created masthead position that reports directly to the editor.

This title captures the special role Joe plays as the editor in charge of the overall design of the paper and the editing of graphics. It is also an acknowledgment of how far the paper's design has come since Joe arrived five years ago and created the current system of design. The Times won 79 awards in the Society for News Design competition this year, the most won by any single publication.

Beyond awards, Joe has made design an integral part of the life of The Times.

In recent months Joe has overseen a dramatic redesign of the magazine, which will be re-launched early next year. He is also working on a redesign of the front page. In addition to working closely with me on future projects, Joe will continue to play a major role in the daily paper.

This announcement, and other recent leadership changes, will be reflected in tomorrow's masthead.

>Hutchinson Freed Up From Design and Graphics Oversight [8.24.05]
>Bill Gaspard Resigns [9.03.05]
>Gaspard Speaks About His Resignation [9.05.05]
>Melissa McCoy Named DME Over Design and Graphics Desks [11.11.05]

*Update: Also, L.A. Observed reports that the two-year-old Outdoors section will disappear after Dec. 6.

A San Jose Mercury News source has sent me an account written by an insider of the Friday meeting that announced that enough buyouts had been achieved to avoid layoffs. While there was a touch of relief in the air, the mood was hardly celebratory.

If only anyone believed that now we can start rebuilding with confidence that the lopping is over. To be sure, the restructuring of the newsroom is under way. The reorganization plan supposedly will recognize that we must scale back our aspirations but will maintain our focus on local news, technology news, and the valley's diverse cultures. We'll do that by implementing structural changes that remain only in blueprints, like the adoption of a universal copy desk, a universal design desk, and a multi-departmental team of seven people on a one-year mission to chart our course on the Web. But audible in the background is the ominous, throaty roar of chain saws as Knight Ridder’s biggest shareholders press for action, contending that the chain is worth far more if sold, in whole or in pieces. Friday, rumors surfaced that Knight Ridder had decided to sell the Mercury News, something KR spokesman Polk Laffoon labeled "nuts." And though the newsroom amputations were designed to set the baseline for headcount going forward – allowing for hiring to keep pace with attrition – Goldberg acknowledged Friday that hiring is unlikely through at least year’s end as KR continues to clamp down on spending in the face of the Wall Street challenge.

Everybody's yapping today about the Los Angeles Times dumping Robert Scheer and Michael Ramirez. But there's other news on Spring Street. Assistant Managing Editor Melissa McCoy has been promoted to deputy managing editor overseeing the design desk, graphics department and news operations group, says L.A. Observed. McCoy, who was AME for copy desks, was given oversight of design and graphics last August when Deputy Managing Editor Joe Hutchinson was freed up to work on other projects.

As for the news design director position left vacant when Bill Gaspard lit off for the territories, we hear it's frozen as Editor Dean Baquet evaluates staffing levels. Update: And now I hear that it may not be frozen. So there you are.

Good news, of sorts, from San Jose. Tim Ball reports that enough Mercury News folks took the buyouts, so there won't be any layoffs.

Update: Short AP story here.

In the vein of that Miami New Times Wilma cover, some wag sent me the following creation. (Note: If you thought the last one was in questionable taste, avert your eyes).

If something about that seems familiar, you'd be right.

In the wake of Hurricane Wilma, Miami New Times gets right to the point.

(Thanks, Paul!)

The New York Observer's Tom Scocca has begun chronicling the battle of the New York tabs in the Media Mob weblog.

Note to the Post: Printing the house ad big doesn't make the game any less crummy.

I've been buried in paying work, but my Orlando pal Bo Burton is better at time-management and actually paid attention to what other newspapers did on Tuesday with the 2,000th American military death in Iraq and (unbidden, even!) sent along some covers that, for good or ill, caught her eye.

I'm thinking, what with everything from Oklahoma City to 9/11 to the first 1,000 deaths in Iraq, that the whole acres of mugs and/or huge list of names thing is losing its punch. Sure, it can be emotionally effective, but it's beginning to feel cliched. Perhaps this was a moment for a little more depth, a la the Chron and the PI, or some simple, quiet dignity, like Newsday. What say you?

You may recall last April when a Spanish telecom company, in order to get a big splash while rolling out a new branding identity, placed some pretty intrusive advertising on the cover of the Spanish sports daily Marca. Now, it's Portugal's turn. On Wednesday, TMN, the country's leading mobile telecommunications company and a subsidiary of Portugal Telecom, introduced a new logo and was apparently able to pony up muitos euros to swath the entire front pages of three of the largest dailies in the country in their signature, er, blue. Or something. Yikes.

Incidentally, two of the newspapers, Jornal de Noticias and Diario de Noticias, are owned by Lusomedia, which was, until last month, owned by Portugal Telecom. (The third, Publico, is owned by Sonae.) And the soccer players on the front of the Jornal de Noticias and Diario de Noticias play for F.C. Porto, whose jerseys bear the logo of, yes, Portugal Telecom, with whom the club just last Friday announced a new 6-year, $25.6 million sponsorship deal. Wow. What's the Portuguese word for "convergence?"

(Thanks, Don!)

Hartford Courant staff writer Joann Klimkiewicz has an interesting piece today on the state of newspapers (erm, not so good) and what they're doing about it. She talked to big-shots like San Jose Mercury News executive editor Susan Goldberg, Minneapolis Star-Tribune deputy managing editor Monica Moses, Baltimore Sun deputy managing editor Monty Cook and consultant Alan Jacobson. And also, God knows why, me. (Thanks, Joann, for not making me sound like the complete rambling jackass I'm sure I sounded like.)

The upshot is, a whole lotta "reinvention" going on.

"Some people get worried when things become very visual," said Monica Moses, deputy managing editor for visuals at The Star Tribune. "But there are some scholars who say ... it just means that people are thinking in a new way - and that's OK. ... Research shows that electronic media have changed the way people want to absorb information. And that requires a rethinking of the newspaper."

But a Paris Hilton image to sell a story? Visual story teasers elbowing important stories off the front page? Do they risk dumbing-down the news?

"I really think what we need to do is give readers a real mix," said Goldberg. "They want to read a really long, beautifully written piece of journalism about an important subject. But other people are going to pick up [the newspaper], and all they have time to do is scan it....

"And we need to do both these things well. I don't believe that providing a quick, informative piece is in any way dumbing down what we do."

I've been meaning to link to this all week, but if you think that newspapers before the 1960s were big slabs of gray type, don't miss Jack Shafer's look at Joseph Pulitzer's beautiful early 20th century New York World.

Rewriting the rules of New York City journalism, he was as likely to run an exposé of tenement life as he was a story (illustrated, of course) headlined "French Scientist and Explorer Discovers a Race of Savages with Well-Developed Tails." The World established the first separate sports department at a New York daily, writes biographer Denis Brian in Pulitzer: A Life, and forged another path by aggressively hiring female journalists. One of his most famous recruits was investigative reporter Nellie Bly, who once checked herself into an insane asylum to reveal its stark living conditions.

But what made this vivid copy sing was its graphic and typographical presentation. Pulitzer's people bulldozed the dreary, gray newspaper design template. The World ran headlines across a couple of columns, not just one, or completely across the page if it really wanted to provoke readers.

Halftone photos, dramatic and comic illustrations, inset graphics, hand-lettered headlines, and buckets of color enlivened these artful pages. See, for example, the treatment given to a cover story about New York skyscrapers in the World's Jan. 20, 1907, Sunday magazine, which beckons the reader to enter its universe. Today's newspaper designers construct layouts so they can be comprehended in a flash. But the World's designers invited the eye to explore, to soak up detail, to appreciate subtlety, to partner with the brain in forming a lasting mental image. The skyscraper layout resembles an Advent calendar, saying "open me" in countless spaces.

>The Lost World of Joseph Pulitzer [Slate]

BREAKING! You know that high-zoot Garcia Media redesign the Kansas City Star is working on? Look at this:

Well, that's not the redesign. But it is the cover of Sunday's paper. To mark the paper's 125th anniversary, the newspaper produced a special section and produced an old-style front page. Here are more pages, courtesy Kansas City Star front-page designer Charles Gooch.

'eater 85 Originally uploaded by mfriesen.

To my fellow Missouri grads out there, this weekend is the big Maneater reunion in honor of the newspaper's 50th anniversary (to non-Missouri grads out there, yes, the student newspaper is called "The Maneater"). There's a weblog full of folks' misty watercolor (or possibly booze-soaked) memories, and I've put up a couple of annotated Flickr photos.

I should not let the day pass without noting that USA Today rolled off the presses for the first time 23 years ago today, Sept. 15, 1982. As SND's Design magazine noted in naming USA Today the No. 1 most influential moment in news design:

"Mark down that date for future reference. It's a big one.

How big? There is newspaper design before USA Today and then there is everything after it.

Why? Because its birth forever altered what the fledging world of visual journalism would become. In fact, it changed the way Americans get their news in printed form. Period."

One more reason you should make sure your dummy type is free of swear words, political snarkiness or comments about your sister's current husband.

(Thanks, Olle!)

One more for the "what were they thinking" file. From the photo to the headline, the Monday business cover in the Richmond Times-Dispatch looked a whole lot like a December cover of Style Weekly, a Richmond weekly. The Times-Dispatch ran an editor's note on the front page Wednesday.

Monday's Metro Business cover photograph about a Goochland candy maker was strikingly similar to a cover photo published Dec. 22 by Style Weekly.

Imitating the photo showed a serious lapse of judgment. We first learned about it late Monday afternoon. An internal investigation continues.

At the very least, credit should have been extended to Style for having the idea. But using the same photo concept without permission or explanation is unacceptable. We also repeated key headline words.

Integrity is a keystone value at The Times-Dispatch. That's why we are disclosing this error to you on the front page.

The Times-Dispatch apologizes to our readers for letting you down and to Style Weekly.

Louise Seals, Managing Editor

(via Romenesko)

Kevin Roderick at L.A. Observed reports today that new L.A. Times editor Dean Baquet has freed up Deputy Managing Editor Joe Hutchinson to work on redesigning the front page, the Sunday magazine and some other projects. The design and graphics department will now be overseen by Assistant Managing Editor for copy desks Melissa McCoy. Roderick says that gossip held that Hutchinson was not a Baquet favorite but in the staff memo announcing Hutchinson's shift out of day-to-day management, Baquet calls him "the best newspaper designer in America." As Roderick notes, "read into it what you will."

>Times design shifts [L.A. Observed]

Wonkette has a rough transcript of today's Inside Politics on CNN where Robert Novak (known to "Daily Show" fans as "Douchebag") got peeved at James Carville (known to his wife as "Serpenthead"), dropped a "barnyard epithet" and stalked off the set. And believe it or not, there's a tangential relationship to our line of work.

ED HENRY: katherine harris went onto the house of representatives. now she wants to move over to the united states senate. today she got the news that the speaker of the florida house won't challenge her for the republican nomination. she is blaming unnamed newspapers for tarnishing her image by doctoring her makeup with photo shop. that computer program. bob, have you been investigating this story?

BOB NOVAK: no, but i've had the same experience that she did. a lot of my trouble in the world is they've doctored my makeup and the colorrized me in a lot of newspapers on my picture. i sympathize with her.

Bob Novak's image problems come from people Photoshopping him? Really? Not from the whole "ratting out my sources and shilling for the administration" thing? Really?

>Novak Takes His Lack of Balls and Goes Home [Wonkette]

The big news in the newspaper biz today is Knight Ridder bugging out of Detroit, selling the Free Press to Gannett, who in turn is selling the Detroit News to the MediaNews Group. Romenesko, of course, has it covered. I'm already hearing some nervous Detroit folks starting to put out job feelers. Recruiters, take note!

Here are a few of today's Canadian front pages. It's both a "miracle" and a "great escape," it seems. Praise be to God and Steve McQueen.

A besieged public official shoots himself to death in the lobby of your newspaper. How do you cover it? Here's what The Miami Herald did today, going wide with a shot of the body and an editor's note:

The graphic nature of this photograph will no doubt be disturbing to some readers, but The Herald believes it is an essential element in the reporting of this tragic story.
Tom Fiedler, executive editor

Would your newspaper run it? Good call, I say. Reminds me a bit of the '80s, when the Herald was the newspaper of Edna Buchanan and Gene Miller and Carl Hiaasen, the gutsy, kick-ass newspaper all us idealistic college kids wanted to work for. Now, sacking the columnist who apparently secretly recorded one of the last interviews with the public official? Um, not so much.

Wednesday's Daytona Beach News-Journal, as you might expect, reflected the excitement of Florida's Space Coast to Tuesday's shuttle launch.

But it looks like that guy down there in the lower left got, er, really excited. Next time, pal, try thinking about baseball.

Lance Armstrong won his seventh-straight Tour de France yesterday and retired from the sport. And on front pages from Austin to New York to Paris to Reykjavik to Tel Aviv, yellow's the color of the day (except Oslo, as homeboy Thor Hushovd won the green sprinter's jersey). For my fellow bike geeks, here are some pages.

Here are the previously promised pages from the Chicago Sun-Times' new Fluff section, for all your Lindsay Lohan needs.

Courtesy of Robb Montgomery, here are the pages from the previously mentioned Controversy section, which the Sun-Times introduced Sunday. Later today, Fluff!

The LA Times introduces a retooled Sunday opinion section today, called Current. Editor Bob Sipchen writes:

It's time for a change. For months, as our colleagues on the Op-Ed and editorial pages have been striving to redefine the form with their innovations, the Sunday section has been experimenting with ways to present ideas, arguments and information in essays, columns, graphics-driven "charticles" and cartoons.

With this handsome new design, we'll redouble our efforts to find well-written content that spans the ideological spectrum and do our best to present it with pretension and intellectual flab removed. Our goal is to prove that "smart" and "fun" are complementary concepts.

Here's what the inside looks like.

Some pages from the Western Hemisphere:

And Canada:

Some front pages from the British Isles today:

Ron Reason, he of Garcia Media (and Poynter, and the St. Pete Times, yadda, yadda), is back online and blowing three years worth of dust off his site. Huzzah! Reason has heard all the wailing about declining newspaper readership and he has the answer. Schnauzers! Or something like that. (And possibly, more uses of the word "huzzah.")

A month or so ago, I trekked out to the family homestead in LaPorte, Ind., and encountered most of the family snorting like madwomen over the newspaper. Yes, the Michigan City News-Dispatch had elicited a violently positive reaction, and no doubt, several subscription renewals. (I was just glad none of these generations of happy readers had just drunk any milk!)

The paper had published not one but TWO broadsheet sections that day, featuring readers' submissions of their pets' photos. Captions told the name of the pet (predominantly dogs), named the owner, and occasionally, gave a bit more detail about a special talent (of the pet, not the owner). And the sections had ads! (I do not have PDFs of these pages but maybe the inevitable web-based frenzy over this column will inspire someone at the N-D to see this and send them to me to share with the world.

Tell me what you think newspapers need to do to elicit more uproarious snorting from giddy readers. All entries must be emailed to me PRONTO with a JPG photo (no more than 200k please) of your dog, and the more amusing or interesting the better. Tell me your name, your position and title, your newspaper, and the dog's name, and special talent (of the dog, not you) if applicable. (Bonus points if the photo or the talent involves a newspaper.) And do not forget your brief suggestion for the salvation of the industry! I will pick the finalists, post the suggestions and the photos, and then we'll have a vote!

The winner will get his or her choice of a FREE copy of Pegie Stark Adam's "Color, Contrast and Dimension in News Design," Mario Garcia's "Pure Design," or my very own forthcoming "White Space: The Ultimate Guide." (This is actually a blank Mead notebook, but it has its own special appeal.) If the winner is a miniature schnauzer, you get all three! (Sara and Mario, you are not eligible to enter.) Come on, email me here so the industry can get a new leash on life!

>Roll over, play dead? [Design With Reason]

I suppose if I'm a Frito-Lay exec this morning I'm having some mixed feelings...

On Thursday, the folks at The Patriot in Harrisburg, Pa., published the page on the left. Today The Citizens' Voice in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., about a hundred miles up the road, came up with something a bit, er, familiar. Coincidence? As Jack McCoy once said, "Grand juries don't like coincidences."

So on CNN Monday night, Aaron Brown said during his Morning Papers segment that somebody bet him 100 bucks that The Oregonian wouldn't put Michael Jackson on Page One. Well, we did (I'm wondering where my cut is), and we weren't alone.

Of 249 American front pages at the Newseum on Tuesday, 228 had a significant Michael Jackson presence on Page One. The other 21 had a small-ish teaser, or nothing at all. Most of the 21 are small papers that emphasize local news, with a couple of exceptions, most notably the State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill. (circ. 55,700), and the Kalamazoo Gazette (circ. 56,000, and an afternoon paper, which may have contributed to the Jackson play).

Even among the 228, you could practically feel some of them holding their noses.

Aw, c'mon, buddies! Relax! It doesn't hurt. I promise.

Update: An alert reader points out that the Patriot-Ledger is also a PM and perhaps deserves some slack. OK, slack granted.

"Hey, I've got it! We use one of his song titles for a headline! Or maybe a dance step!"

"Brilliant, sir! Brilliant! That's why you're the editor!"

"Now, which one do we pick? ..."

You spend all night coming up with a hot headline to go out in, and then that bitch from across town totally shows up in the same thing!

The Des Moines Register (Gannett, 150,907 daily; 239,367 Sunday) on Wednesday launched Juice, a free weekly tab aimed at readers age 25-34. The first issue is 72 pages with a circulation of 40,000. The editor is Chris Snider, a University of Iowa grad who, until recently, was the news design director at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Gannett has similar publications in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Nashville, Lansing, Mich., Boise, Louisville, Wilmington, Del., Greenville, S.C., and Rochester, N.Y.

As you can see, very "magazine-y," with a lot of color and white space. Typographically, it sticks pretty much to Cyrus Highsmith's Stainless and Dispatch families.

So, thanks to Chris, here are some pages.

Here are some pages from today's Washington Post's Deep Throat coverage.

Washingtonpost.com has a good chronology of the whole business here, with links to a bunch of the Post's stories from the time (and since). They've got all manner of audio and video and such, but I'd really love to see some images of Post front pages. The Vanity Fair article (a pdf of which is here) gives us a glimpse of the Big One.

As we slumber in this hemisphere, the World Editors Forum is hopping over in Seoul, and much blogging about it is going on at editorsweblog.org. Speakers include El Mundo's Alberto Cairo, VisualEditors.com's Robb Montgomery, Mario Garcia, Die Welt's Jan-Eric Peters, Joi Ito, Dan Gillmor and more. Also, Robb has pictures (one of which is above) here.

In the wake of the big Eurovote, here are some Monday front pages from France (except that's a Tuesday front page for Le Monde, as they take les weekends off, huge government-altering news or not).

I guess there were several ways you could go on your front page with the Saddam-in-his-undies story this weekend.

1. You could not mention it, like The New York Times.

2. You could run a story, but no photo, like The Philadelphia Inquirer.

3. You could run a photo of another newspaper's front page (twice!) and a headline about how the U.S. government's pissed off about the photos being published, like Stars and Stripes, a paper published by, er, the U.S. government.

4. You could just damn the torpedos and proudly run the photo and a snarky headline, like the New York Post.

5. You could get in touch with your inner 13-year-old, like the Beaver County (Pa.) Times.

On May 18, 1980, a massive earthquake-caused landslide caused Mount St. Helens in Southwest Washington to explode, blasting 1,312 feet off the top of the 9,677 foot mountain. The blast killed nearly every living thing in a 212 square mile area. The explosion and resulting mudflows also killed 57 people and destroyed nearly 200 homes.

Naturally, this was a huge news story, especially in the Northwest. Here's how a few of the newspapers in the area played it the next day.

The Oregonian, about 50 miles from the peak, is the nearest large daily. The Daily News is in Longview, Wash., only about 40 miles from the volcano. The 27,500-circulation daily, with a staff of 29, doggedly covered the story, publishing 420 stories in the first two weeks and 2,200 in the first year. In 1981 the Daily News was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for local spot news reporting, with special mention given to the photographs by Roger A. Werth, who took the picture on the front page. As always, click on the above images to enlarge, but to see an even larger 1000-pixel wide scan of The Oregonian cover, click here.

Here's a double truck the Daily News ran May 19. The paper has a site with many of the stories, photographs and pages they published after the eruption.

The Oregon Journal of Portland and Capital Journal of Salem, Ore., were PM's and since the mountain erupted on a Sunday morning, they didn't get their first crack at the story until Monday afternoon. Extra large versions of these covers are here and here.

And here are a few Northwest papers and their anniversary front pages.

The Oregonian and The Columbian of Vancouver, Wash. One of the eruption's victims, 27-year-old Reid Blackburn, was a Columbian staff photographer. Those are his glasses in the centerpiece.

The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The News Tribune of Tacoma and the Spokesman-Review of Spokane. The ash from the eruption went generally east, hitting the area around Spokane the hardest.

The Statesman Journal of Salem, Ore., and The Register-Guard of Eugene, Ore.

From West 43rd Street today comes this New York Times page from April 14, 1996, and this quote from, well, much earlier: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." — Ecclesiastes

Look at all that white space and extry leading and wide copy width! Almost thought they dropped the Orange County Register on my front porch Sunday morning. Good to see a little bit of the fine inside-section design creeping out to the Times' Holy Page One.

Subjecting a newspaper or parts thereof to a focus group — such as before a redesign or the launch of a new section — is nothing new. But the Chicago Tribune is taking it another step, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, using an online group to get feedback on specific pages, photos and headlines before publication.

While most of what the focus group sees has already run in the paper, the Tribune has tested photographs, layouts and headlines before publication, sources said. The group does not see the text of stories before publication.

"You sort of do it to take the temperature out there. But I don't know of any editor who's been told, 'Whatever they say, that's what we do,'" said Denise Joyce, editor of the paper's Q section.

Mary Ann Weston, an associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University, noted newspapers have long used market research. But the Tribune's latest foray "seems to be taking market research to a whole different level."

Whether or not it was ethical "would depend on what they do with the information they get," and whether the focus group was limited to a certain sector of the population.

>Tribune using online focus groups before paper appears in print [Chicago Sun-Times]

For those of you who don't follow the comments in older posts, I had to pull this one out. In the discussion of last week's item on British tabs, someone referred to them as "screeching harpies." This brought a thundering response today from Richard Wallace, editor of the Daily Mirror.

Screeching harpies? Absolutely. Our newspapers make no bones about our political persuasions or sociological viewpoints, a lesson perhaps the mainstream US media needs to learn as we all face the onslaught of insta-media (most of it heavily politicised/attitudinal). The NYT breathtakingly embarrassing navel-gazing is symptomatic of a US newspaper industry that has been wrong-footed by the screeching harpies of Murdoch's Fox/Post and the current occupants of the White House....See you at the barricades!
Richard Wallace, Editor, Daily Mirror

The British redtops, in the runup to the election, look a bit like a Fark Photoshop contest today. Crikey!

Remember the Parkville Luminary, that new-ish weekly with the old-ish vibe in the Kansas City area? Publisher Mark Vasto sends word that the paper's website is up and running. With pdfs of the front page, even!

Pretty funny juxtaposition of photo and unrelated headline at the Dallas Morning News this morning. (Via Matt Haughey)

And a pretty cringe-worthy one from the Strib at planetdan.net. I think they fixed it for some copies, though, because the Newseum page is different.

It's been a bit quiet around here, as I've been communing with the sea turtles and various species of your rum-based beverages.

Anyway, one of the best (and cheapest) things you can find at the Pearl Harbor gift shop (at least for newspaper geeks like me) is the reproduction of pages from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin's Dec. 7, 1941 extras. Fascinating!

Boston Phoenix media critic Dan Kennedy wants Boston to remain a two-daily town, so he has some suggestions for the Boston Herald. One of them is "Upgrade the Look."

Newcomers to Boston no doubt are perplexed when they hear old-timers refer to the Herald as "the Record." That’s a reference to the Record American, a Hearst-owned tabloid from a bygone era that, along with several other papers, eventually morphed into the modern Herald. Trouble is, the Herald really does look like the Record, if the Record could be exhumed, updated a bit, and printed in color.

Moreover, stories in the Herald have shrunk to news-brief length, with a hyperkinetic layout that gives readers little guide to what they’re likely to encounter on any given page. That goes against modern trends in newspaper design. I would tone down the presentation, air out the story lengths somewhat, and turn the Herald into more of a writer’s paper. The idea is to appeal to intelligent readers looking for both an alternative (or, more likely, a supplement) to the Globe and for something more substantial than the Metro.

These changes cannot be accomplished without a significant redesign. The Herald underwent a dramatic makeover in 1998, an effort led by well-known design consultant Ron Reason. The result was an attractive, colorful paper that looked more like a compact version of USA Today than a traditional urban tabloid. These days, about all that’s left of that effort are the white-on-blue nameplate and the body type.

Returning to the 1998 look would be a considerable improvement. But if Purcell and Chandler were asking me (ha!), I would go for something more understated, in keeping with the audience I’d be trying to reach. I’d certainly keep the tabloid format, but not the sensibility. Long Island’s Newsday takes a magazine-like approach that might be effective. Locally, the Boston Business Journal is a good example of a graphically interesting, elegant-looking paper that just happens to be printed at tab size. The BBJ look may be too quiet for a paper that has to sell itself on the newsstand every day. So I’d go with Newsday — with the Reason design as my fallback position.

The Hindu, a 125-year-old, 1 million circulation daily in Chennai (Madras), India, unveiled a redesign (above right) today. N. Ram, editor-in-chief, writes in a front-page note:

A newspaper of record, a serious, quality daily offering a variety of news, features, analysis, and comment, wedded to the classical 'core' values of journalism: truth-telling, freedom and independence, justice, comprehensiveness, reliability, and social responsibility. But a newspaper committed to being contemporary in all aspects, including design. Among other things, this means being engaging and lively; responding to the changing interests and tastes of a growingly diverse 'interlocking public'; taking visual journalism to enhanced levels; seizing the exciting opportunities India, the world, and the local community offer a contemporary newspaper; and being systematic, put-together, and disciplined about all this.

'Contemporary-Classical,' this is how we see our place under the sun. And this is how we wish to be read and assessed by our three million readers, a growing proportion of them young men and women.

Garcia writes:

The purpose of this redesign is to offer a more contemporary, elegant, and functional newspaper: by giving pre-eminence to text, including (where appropriate and necessary) long text, but also by enabling photographs, other graphics, and white space to have an enhanced role on the pages; by giving the reader more legible typography, an efficient indexing or 'navigation' system, a clear hierarchy of stories, a new and sophisticated color palette; and by offering the advertiser better value and new opportunities.

The challenge when redesigning a classic, elegant, and traditional newspaper such as The Hindu is to make sure that one improves a good product, attracts younger readers, but does not take away all the wonderful attributes that have made this newspaper the icon it is within Indian journalism.

The typography is various weights of Interstate and Chronicle. More page images after the jump.

>Introducing our new look newspaper [The Hindu]

A couple of developments on the intrusive advertising front this week. First, in Monday's Australian, the Sports section was, apparently, wrapped by a four-page advertising section, the cover of which bears a strong resemblance to that day's actual Sports cover. The ad cover's on the left (the little 9-point "ADVERTISING" label on the top of the page is your tipoff; oh, and the HUGE-ASS TRUCK blasting its way through the page). This is the wrapper's centerspread ad they wanted you to see.

Second, and most horrifying, is this page:

In a page that will almost certainly be left out of next year's SND entries, the Spanish sports daily Marca, one of this year's World's Best-Designed Newspapers, on Wednesday actually incorporated the new logo of a telecom company into their main headline.

The blue "M" logo is for Movistar, which is, if I understand some of these Spanish financial articles correctly, the brand under which Telefo�nica Mo�viles is consolidating its operations in 13 Spanish-speaking countries after its acquisition earlier this year of BellSouth�s Latin American cellular operations. The company launched a $100 million ad campaign this week, and it looks like some of that cash bought some prime product placement in the editorial real estate of one of Spain's best-read newspapers. Kinda makes that hubbub over the jokey inclusion of a tiny little NewTek logo in a Dallas Morning News graphic seem a bit small, doesn't it?

Given the current love affair with European newspapers and some of the speechifying about ethics that went on in the DMN case, I'm curious to see the reaction here. Is one of the requirements to be one of the World's Best-Designed some sort of clear separation between advertising and editorial content? If not, should it be?

I'm no prude, here. I don't particularly like front-page ads, but as long as they're clearly identifiable as such, I don't see them as evil incarnate. But if this sort of product-placement advertising starts eroding the integrity of the editorial space, at what point does a publication cease being an actual "newspaper?"

The Bermuda Sun of Hamilton, Bermuda, introduced a redesign on Friday. The Sun's staff was helped by Bill Ostendorf's Creative Circle Media Consulting (Note to self: Consider career, latitude adjustment). A report on the project, and more before-and-after images, is here. Questions about margarita allowances and extensive "research" trips remain unanswered. As for the typography:

Nimrod text type is dramatically bigger looking than their old one (Times). It is also more efficient and saves space. Gotham Condensed was selected as the primary headline font to give editors better counts on headlines than the Interstate they had used before. We recycled Interstate,� using it for nameplates and page flags, and introduced Poynter Display to give the paper some serif display type for contrast.

>Bermuda Sun [Creative Circle Media Consulting]

On the heels of the Jersey Journal's announcement of an impending switch to tabloid format, Editor and Publisher reports that the Journal and Courier, a 37,000 Gannett daily in Lafayette, Ind., will convert to a Berliner format when it fires up new presses next year. It will be the first North American daily to be produced in the Berliner format, which is about 12.5"x18.5".

I asked Mario Garcia if he thinks the Berliner format is a good move for American publishers.

"It is a way to go "compact" without losing some of the attributes that many editors cling to in their thinking of larger meaning more credible, serious, less tabloidy. Berliner size newspapers can be very elegant (Le Monde, La Vanguardia), and we are now doing some nice conversions of broadsheets to Berliner. It allows for copy to stay pretty much almost at same length levels as in the broadsheet; photos can be displayed amply and well. Not bad. But, at the end of the day, I think Berliner is EASIER on the editors who hate to see themselves "going tabloid". It is, as I always say, a teddy bear to cling to. Yes, Virginia, we are compact, but we are not tabloid. The Berliner format does that. Therapeutic, elegant, more compact than......and some of the most credible dailies in the world use it with grace.

"I predict that for most of those adventurous American dailies whose publishers decide to go compact, Berliner will be the way to go."

Garcia, by the way, is currently in London working on converting The Observer to Berliner format. The Observer, which publishes on Sundays, and its daily sister paper The Guardian are scheduled to make the conversion in the spring of 2006, although there have been rumors about that it may happen as early as this summer.

In other British Isles tabloid news, the Belfast Telegraph, a 134-year-old evening broadsheet, has begun publishing a morning tabloid edition. (Thanks, Malcolm!)

>In Indiana, Another Daily Plans Switch from Broadsheet to Smaller Size [Editor & Publisher]

With the success of tabloid conversions of European newspapers and declining circulation stateside, one of the big questions in American newspaper design circles has been when American broadsheets will begin to make the switch. And who will do it?

The New York Times reports today that the Jersey Journal, a 26,700-circulation Newhouse paper in Jersey City, N.J., will make the conversion to tabloid on April 25.

"We had to address the declining circulation of the daily," said Steve Newhouse, editor in chief of The Jersey Journal and chairman of Advance.net, which oversees the local Web sites of the Newhouse newspapers and the national Web sites of Condé Nast. "We were nervous about putting out a tabloid, but we're making sure that The Jersey Journal has a future."

"Tabs seem to work better in larger metro areas," Mr. Ridder said. "Initially, people were recommending that we try this in smaller markets where there would be less at risk, but we're feeling now that to get the benefit out of it, we need to focus on our larger markets."

"So that's where we're headed," he added, declining to say in which markets he would start the experiment.

He said his experience online showed him that it was necessary for newspapers to change but that they were often resistant. "I'm amazed it took the industry this long to learn that readers preferred this format," he said of tabloids. "And that the format doesn't have cooties."

"They don't call them tabloids," said Mario Garcia, a newspaper designer based in Tampa, Fla., who has overseen the conversions of 15 newspapers to smaller formats. "Tab smells of down-market, of blood, sex and guts. You want to go to a compact. That makes you think of a small Mercedes, a small Jaguar."

>The News Is Big. It's the Papers That Are Getting Small [The New York Times]

The Sun-Times got their Irish up in the flag today.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Update: Testiness!

Here's how today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution covered Friday's courthouse killings and manhunt.

The Chicago Tribune is considering a tabloid version, Chicago Crain's Business reports. Two staffers have seen pieces of a prototype and one says news designers were recently pulled to work on the project.

"Generation Y, that's their format," says Susan Mango Curtis, a former president of the Society of News Design who teaches at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. "They should all be thinking about going tabloid."

>Tribune eyes tab edition [Crain's Chicago Business]

There's a bright new newspaper in the world today. 24 SATA (24 hours) debuted in Croatia this morning and is aimed at the "digital-age reader."

It's an 8.5x11-inch "micro tabloid" and is very visually oriented. There are "visual briefs" on every page, it's full of color, and even has a "photos to the editor" page.

Creator Thomas Dobernigg says:

"Our goal was to develop a new generation of newspaper for a new generation of readers. Fast, informative, entertaining and very much interactive through new journalistic elements it wants to catch the interest of people who so far took their information from other media than traditional newspapers. 24 SATA is as compact as an SMS or e-mail, as colorful as the internet and as visual as a reality show on TV."

The chief architect of the design, it may not surprise you to hear, is Mario Garcia, who says:

"We have conceived this newspaper as the ultimate publication for the digital age. We are well aware of the importance of visuals, but now we also know that there is a whole generation of readers who are accustomed to seeing very small photographic images on their mobile phones and digital cameras. So, why not bring those same images to print? This newspaper will have a high-quality printing press that allows it to reproduce color very well, thus enhancing the legibility of small photos."

The typography is all sans-serif, with Interstate for headlines and Poynter Gothic Text for text.

Garcia worked with project leader Hans Gasser; Dobernigg, who is responsible for content development; and Dietmar Wallner, who is responsible for infrastructure and organization. The paper's editor is Matija Babic, 27, who started a very popular Croatian internet portal, Index.hr. The art director, whose magazine design background has influenced the look of the paper, is Branimir Klaric. Garcia worked on the project with his Hamburg-based Garcia Media team, led by Jan Kny as art director and Margit Meister as designer.

The paper will publish seven days a week and will run between 48 and 64 pages. The initial edition will have 300,000 copies printed and distributed nationally across Croatia, a country with a population of 4.4 million. The cover price is set at half that of other Croatian daily newspapers.

24 SATA is owned by Austrian media company Styria Medien AG, which says in a statement on its website that they "started this project with the motivation to offer Croatia a new type of original and independent daily newspaper, representing an attractive alternative to the monotonous and traditional newspaper market." Interestingly, Styria also holds a majority stake in the best-selling Croatian newspaper Vecernji List.

More page images and photos after the jump.

Get a load of this Argentinian newspaper the VisualMente folks found. Included in the lineup of those responsible for the assassination eight years ago of photojournalist José Luis Cabezas is, well, Krusty the Clown.

>Krusty es culpable [VisualMente]

Back in the '90s, The Washington Post's Sunday Style section had a feature called "The Ear No One Reads," wherein humorous little sentences were run in an upper corner of the section's front page. The Edge (The Oregonian's Tim Harrower-created humor column) last week dug up a website, Gopherdrool.com, that has archived the ears. Some of the favorites:

"This is the First Page of the Rest of Your Newspaper"

"What Are You Looking Up Here For?"

"When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Metro Section"

"How's My Editing? Call 202-334-4312"

"If U Cn Rd Ths Msj, Bg Dl"

"Help, I'm Trapped in the Typesetting Machine"

"Next Week, This Will Be Really Clever"

"Avoiding Clichés Like the Plague"

"Caution: Page Opens Out."

"Integrity First. We Are Not For Sale. Classifieds, Page F10."

"Fashion, Leisure and the Occasional Grisly Murder."

"We Have Fonts We Haven't Even Used Yet"

"This Week's Special Feature: Needlessly-Hyphenated Words."

Portland Press Herald Editor Jeannine Guttman on Sunday recapped 2004 (which included a June redesign) and set out the newspaper's goals for 2005, which, after all, is only 12 percent over. One of the paper's goals, she says, is

... to improve the newspaper content to maintain and grow readership from 2004 levels for daily and Sunday.

Here's how we'll do that. We will develop a "visual culture" in the newsroom, furthering our 2004 redesign of the newspaper. This visual culture will move our new design forward, make stories more accessible to readers, accentuate the news value of our newspaper and make our journalistic presentations more compelling and useful. We have appointed a newsroom design committee to monitor the new design, provide feedback to the news staff and build upon our successes.

>Big gains and new goals [Portland Press Herald]

Earlier:
>Portland's redesign [NewsDesigner.com]

For more pages from the big game, check out SportsDesigner and the expanding list of links from Tim Ball at VisualEditors.com.

The LA Times' Sunday Opinion section has been trying some bold things lately. The section covers of Jan. 16, 23 and 30 all featured full-page cartoons by JibJab, Mark Alan Stamaty and Roman Genn. The Feb. 6 cover scales it back a bit, but still features a sizeable strip by Stan Mack.

On Jan. 30, after the third straight full-page illo, former Timesman Kevin Roderick wrote:

Looks like the full-page JibJab cartoon on the front of the LAT's Opinion section two Sundays ago wasn't the bold stroke and clever visual play it seemed. Turns out it was just the beginning of another (yawn) predictable design format. Today's cartoon by Roman Genn is fine as a work, but the conceit of devoting the entire front page to a one-note illustration feels tired after three straight weeks. Now that I expect it, the splash of color doesn't pull me into Opinion. Instead, it telegraphs nothing new here. It smacks of space filler, like the giant photos in Outdoors, and that's bad in a section that is supposed to lure you with the allure of its ideas.

Instead of coining a new design cliche, why not pick their spots and surprise readers with a really good cartoon or illustration a few times a year? If they must do a giant cartoon every week, and won't move it to the back page, at least shrink it to a half-page. It would still be the largest graphic in the paper all week, but then the editors could really have fun on the cover with catchier headlines, teasers, other graphic devices�maybe even, you know, a particularly smart thought or idea piece.

LAT Deputy Managing Editor Joe Hutchinson says of the changes:

The Opinion section at the Los Angeles Times is going through a metamorphosis of sorts. The past three weeks we used a single illustration as the entire cover - but this is not something we're going to do every week from now on. It's part of the experimentation process leading up to a redesign and rethinking of that particular section. The different approach has given us an opportunity to try something completely different and gauge reactions by our readers and our staff. We will continue to work on creative and inventive ways to get our readers thinking and talking, since inspiring thought is really one of the things an opinion section should do.

The Times has run four letters on the section that I can find online, all negative, like this one.

In the Jan. 23 edition, I count almost one-third of the section constituted of cartoons. I like to read the funnies about as much as most people, and I think Michael Ramirez's offerings are great. But I don't read Opinion to read cartoons. You are diluting your otherwise sober and valued presentation by putting half-page, let alone full-page, cartoons in the section.

(Thanks to Michael Whitley for page images, etc.)

The Reno Gazette-Journal (Gannett, 66,400 daily) launched a redesign last week, the first one in 15 years.

The redesign project was launched by the Gazette-Journal�s news staff nearly two years ago. An internal redesign committee consulted with a variety of national design experts, studied the design of many leading national newspapers and magazines and met repeatedly with local readers in an effort to refine the look of the paper.

Internal �prototype� pages underwent dozens of alterations before the basic structure of what you see today was presented to various groups of readers, including longtime subscribers and recent newcomers to Northern Nevada.

�The readers who came in and reviewed the pages were essential to the process,� said Jim Sloan, a senior editor for projects in the newsroom. �If they didn�t like something, they told us.

�But they liked these pages. They said they felt like they were reading a more relaxed, more informative newspaper.�

Guidance from readers led to several key changes to the newspaper � including the decision to compile all local news in the A section and launch the new Nation & World section, Sloan said.

The new design will emphasize local news on page 1 but also allows news editors to fully explore world events � both on the front page and in the Nation & World section. New �above-the-flag� features at the top of the front page will alert readers to special stories inside the paper, and on the weather page there is a new guide that will alert readers to stories scheduled to appear in the next few days.

>Major redesign goes hand in hand with updated Web site [Reno Gazette-Journal]

(Thanks, tball!)

So The Examiner's got a big honkin' version of their Jim Parkinson nameplate eagle on their opinion page. It's slightly different than the one on the cover, though (well, besides being only half an eagle).

Look at what's in the eagle's talons on the opinion eagle (top). No wimpy olive branches there! Who says eagles don't have opinions?

*Update: In the comments, Roger Black, who redesigned the Examiner back in the Hearst days, points out that, although the nameplate is Jim Parkinson's, the eagle isn't.

The Washington Post began zoning its front page for Virginia, Maryland and D.C. on Tuesday, the day the Washington Examiner (which zones its front the same way) debuted. Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said the move was "not exactly" coincidental.

"The fact that the Examiner itself has a zoned front page certainly made it a timely time to do it," Downie said.

He said the paper had been discussing the change for many months.

The Post also increased the size of a front-page box that highlights stories inside the paper, amplifying it to about one-third the paper's bottom half.

"It was a pretty decent debut issue," said Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz. "It looks and feels like a real newspaper as opposed to a cheap giveaway. I didn't see a whole lot of original reporting, but it was smartly packaged."

The longer-term question, Kurtz said, is whether the paper can have a journalistic impact by providing news other papers lack or whether it will serve largely as "an advertising vehicle."

Robb Montgomery has pictures of the Washington Examiner launch.

You can tell the design consultant because he's the only one wearing a suit.

The champagne from the $1.46 billion purchase of Pulitzer by Lee Enterprises hadn't lost its fizz before 23 people, about 5 percent of the workforce, were laid off Monday at Lee's The Times of Munster, Ind., NewsDesigner.com has learned. Times management says the move has nothing to do with the Pulitzer deal, and in fact considered postponing the announcement.

About six people on the editorial staff were let go, including the design director, night editor, editorial page editor and a photo intern. The Times circulation is 87,000 daily, 93,000 Sunday, and, as of 2003, had 328 full-time and 141 part-time employees.

*Update: The design director in question is Gladys Rios, who came to the Times as design director after a long stint at the Austin American-Statesman, Steve Cavendish reports.

Here's a creative use of white space.

From The Washington Post:

The Russian business daily Kommersant published an edition Monday that was blank except for a court-ordered retraction -- published upside down -- and other items related to an $11.4 million judgment against the publication.

The edition was a satirical protest against a legal finding that the newspaper had erred last summer when it suggested in an article that Moscow-based Alfa Bank was in financial trouble. The Monday edition also included the text of the court's ruling and a photo of the bank's principal shareholder, Mikhail Fridman, shaking hands with President Vladimir Putin.

(Thanks to Jeff Magness for the tip and image)

Courtesy of our pal Robb Montgomery, here's the front page of the first Washington Examiner.

Publisher James McDonald says:

"The Examiner presents a new concept of journalism that we think fits the busy Washington regional market, where our readers may be analyzing the dangers of the Middle East one minute and cheering on their 9-year-old at soccer the next."

"It's always a good day when you have champagne in the newsroom AND champagne in the press room as the first copies come off."

>The Washington Examiner is launched [Washington Examiner]