Bringing Big Changes to a Little Place Called Pocatello

High-profile redesigns usually feature a few things: a large-circulation newspaper with deep pockets, big-name consultants and big newsrooms full of talented designers. So what happens when a newspaper with a circulation less than 30,000 and a newsroom staff of about 20 is redesigned?

The Idaho State Journal
is one of nearly 700 newspapers whose circulation is less than 100,000. The redesign, launched on Monday, Feb. 12, was created to work under constraints not found in larger daily newspapers. With limited staff, technology and time, the redesign focused on content and tried to avoid creating daily design ‘requirements’ like cutouts and heavily art directed pages.

Alan Jacobson, president and CEO of Brass Tacks Design, explained those design constraints and the solutions he and the staff of the Journal discovered in this e-mail exchange:

1. What were the primary goals of the redesign of the Idaho State Journal? Improve circulation? Increase classified ad lineage? Add readership? Something totally different?

Here are the goals, strategies and tactics I crafted on site with publisher Bill Kunerth and editor Ian Fennell:

Goal: Increase readership and revenue

Strategies for increasing readership

Tactics for increasing readership

2. What, if any, part of the redesign directly targeted improved revenue sources for the newspaper?

Strategies for improving revenue
Re-brand the classified front for real estate and automotive at least one day each week.

Tactics for improving revenue
Allow auto dealers and realtors to “sponsor” classifieds by co-branding classifieds with their businesses.

3. Was there a redesign of either classified or display ads as part of your process?

Absolutely. At Brass Tacks Design, we encourage all our clients to redesign their classifieds when they redesign their editorial product. We’ve found that redesigned classified sections are the best way to gain a quick ROI on a redesign, while providing the opportunity to boost readership.

And by a classified redesign, I don’t mean merely making the classified banners “prettier.” A comprehensive classified redesign should include new strategies to boost readership and revenue in addition improving the appearance of the section.

Our most inventive proposal for boosting revenue at the ISJ was the creation of a weekly, glossy real estate tab that leveraged the high-quality, heat-set offset printing the ISJ can do on their new press — the same press they use for their daily newsprint products. This new, weekly product will be far more effective than the monthly products in the market because the ads will be much more timely.

4. The Journal‘s managing editor, Ian Fennell, mentioned using focus groups (in his blog) that involved subscribers, occasional readers and people who didn’t read the paper at all. How does the redesign improve the paper for each of those three different groups?

Subscribers will benefit because they’ll be seeing more of themselves and their neighbors in the redesigned ISJ. The new design calls for at least fives faces per front per day.

Occasional readers are more likely to be drawn to the paper because we ramped up the single-copy presentation with bolder lead headlines and more faces above the fold.

Non-readers are just that — non-readers. There isn’t anything for them, but we weren’t targeting them. Our goal was to get occasional readers to read more often or become subscribers.

We did nothing in knee-jerk reaction to focus groups. We merely used their input to help us make better decisions based on our own knowledge and experience.

5. Did content change or were sections added, altered or subtracted to meet the needs of these reader groups?

We decided to put more emphasis on positive, local news without sacrificing any essential news. If you examine the before-and-after prototypes, you can see how content was played somewhat differently without leaving anything out. Note that all prototypes were built with content that was available on the day of publication — so this is a real-world redesign, not a pie-in-the-sky solution.

“Red & Blue” was an idea for the Sunday paper to offer clearly partisan political opinion from both the Left/Democratic/liberal/blue perspective and the Right/Republican/conservative/red perspective. This page was intended to replace another section front that didn’t seem to have high readership.

We also renamed one of the Sunday sections, “Your Journal,” to focus on stories about readers by readers. This reflected our overall strategy to put more local faces on every page. And it reinforces the overall marketing theme: “It’s all about you.”

6. What other recent redesign influenced this project? Either with things worth emulating or worth avoiding?

Unlike much of the newspaper design you see today, we avoided reliance on fancy Photoshop effects and techniques. As a community daily, the ISJ‘s resources are limited, so we wanted editors to spend more time on story selection, headline writing and picture usage, without being distracted by the design “requirements” for cutouts and other time-consuming tasks.

7. How do you make a redesign sustainable? What size is the Journal‘s design staff? Was there staff training? Did you use pre-made templates and library elements?

Design staff? That’s a good one!

The ISJ has 20 full-time employees in the entire news department. That’s fewer than some newspapers have in their art departments. So their new design required a simple format that was easy to execute and easy to sustain.

Redesigns don’t become reality if they require resources that aren’t available. An effective redesign must leverage all existing resources — people, paper, time and technology — to provide the best product without incurring new costs or other demands.

To prepare for the redesign, we did days of one-on-one, hands-on training in page design, headline writing, and photo usage and cropping. We also built templates in both QuarkXPress and InDesign, because the ISJ was using both when the prototype was built.

Formatting the design and leveraging technology are key to making the most of limited resources. But it still takes good people to make it happen. Fortunately for me, publisher Bill Kunerth and editor Ian Fennell are both first-class newspapermen. And every member of their staff is just as good or better. Pocatello may be a small town, but there is nothing small time about the Idaho State Journal.

8. The redesigned newspaper seems to have a much stronger sense of order. Is there a new grid behind the design? Did you make other, similar changes?

The section fronts use a non-standard grid that allows the ISJ to make the most of digest items on the left edge of the page. Unlike most papers that use a “left-hand rail” one standard column wide, the ISJ‘s digest is much wider, allowing for bigger headlines, larger images and more content in digest format.

9. You use a lot of vivid colors in the redesign. How did you decide what colors to use and how much color the paper should have?

Readers love color. Period. It’s almost impossible to have too much color, as long as the press can handle it. The ISJ‘s press is relatively new, and its color quality was an under-utilized resource this redesign tapped to full advantage.

We chose colors that would be appealing even with the minor variations that are unavoidable with offset Web printing. These colors aren’t likely to compete with color photos on the page, which is another important consideration.

10. You, personally, are not afraid to take up a contrary viewpoint. Does the “let’s challenge their thinking” line of thought show up in this redesign?

Too many designs are about bells and whistles, or other design gimmicks that require highly paid, highly trained specialists or lots time to execute every day — two things that are in short supply at the ISJ. Pocatello’s redesign puts its emphasis on the people of Pocatello, with an easy-to-follow format that guarantees lots of local faces on every front every day. I think readers care more about content than cutouts and dropcaps.

11. Do you expect the Journal to be able to compete for your “Best Front Design” award?

Don’t you?