It was a busy weekend for redesigns among U.S. newspapers. The Hartford Courant‘s new look debuted Sunday, with a dramatically different nameplate and a lead story on the death of one of Connecticut’s most well-known residents, Paul Newman.
The Chicago Tribune and The Oklahoman both launched this morning.
I talked with key staffers at each site over the last few days about the premieres, the process, the way they’ve communicated the changes to their readers and the elements of the designs that they find most exciting.
Here are comments from Jonathon Berlin, design director at the Chicago Tribune, Melanie Shaffer, design director at The Hartford Courant and Yvette Walker, director of presentation at The Oklahoman.
Chicago Tribune
The previews I’ve seen of the Tribune and the way you’ve given readers a preview of what’s to come are impressive. The video seems to bring readers into the conversation. What are you most excited about, personally?
Jonathon Berlin: The most exciting thing about the changes we’ll start on Monday is that it will really be a completely different experience.
All of the best things we do — the analysis, the voices, the way we talk to our readers — are going to be amplified and turned up. I think what we’ve managed to do is take the way that you’re used to reading a big-city broadsheet daily and just sort of turn it on its ear and make it into a daily magazine about Chicago.
Page two and three of the front section, an opening spread of pages that we call The Talk, will have our top columnists.
It also has a page that’s full of the things that people are talking about — the types of things that journalists talk about throughout the day, at news meetings. For some reason, these things never seem to make it into the paper, because we fill the paper by a different set of rules than what’s interesting and human!
What have you learned from readers in this process?
Berlin: What we found through our research and talking with readers is that people respected who we were. They knew the Tribune and they liked the Tribune, but the emotional engagement was something that we really needed to work on.
We have a great reach throughout Chicago through our paper and our Web site. But what we didn’t have was a very deep, emotional resonance.
So we’re going to try to make it clear that we’ve got, in the building, 600 experts on Chicago baseball and transit and government or whatever. And those people are going to be talking right to readers. And there are a bunch of features that will work like that.
So, what I’m really excited about is that we’re going to launch at a time when we get to do great journalism. We’ve got one baseball team in the playoffs. And then, we’ve got this great presidential race with a Chicago guy, right at the front of the pack!
Those stories could hardly be better opportunities for using a variety of story forms.
Berlin: Those types of stories make the newspaper come alive.
Those kinds of stories are really going to let us know how the design works. With baseball playoffs and with a presidential election, you do every kind of storytelling that’s possible in a newspaper.
If Obama gets elected, then that is a fabulous story for us. It would be our guy in the White House.
You’ve done a lot of work to explain the redesign with your online guide. That must have taken an incredible amount of energy to put together — on top of re-crafting the paper itself. How has the guide helped you?
Berlin: We put the guide online and we sent out an e-mail to two hundred and some thousand readers — sort of our most devoted readers. We said, “Hey, check this out and tell us what you think.” We’ve gotten back around a thousand comments, I think.
It ran the gamut — a lot of positive stuff; a lot of good questions that helped us to calibrate where we are.
By discussing the changes online, it seems that you’re trying to bring them into the process. What other things are you planning?
Berlin: We’re really looking at this as the start of something. Monday is our first one, so there is some significance to that. But what this really represents is the start of a new era for the Tribune. We’re not going to be afraid to change things. We’re not going to be afraid to adjust to what our readers tell us. We’re going to keep developing and pushing.
A newspaper in 2008 needs to be able to change frequently. We’re going to try to listen hard to readers.
Read more about the Tribune redesign, including the paper’s decision to dramatically reduce the number of story jumps and how editors will respond to readers after the launch.
The Hartfort Courant
I was interested in hearing about the interview you did on your local station Fox 61 about the redesign. That’s a good way to let people know what’s coming.
Melanie Shaffer: Yes, our sister station is a Tribune company.
What’s the one thing that you’re most excited about with this redesign?
Shaffer: Just that it’s new. I think that our newspaper has been a little stale for a while. We’d settled into its design. I think it’s always good to mix things up and catch somebody’s eye on the newsstand.
Of the pages I’ve seen, the vertical nameplate seems to be the most striking difference. How did that come about?
Shaffer: It was weeks and weeks of trying to figure out how to send the message that this paper is changing; that it’s evolving and going strongly into the future.
We had pretty much accomplished that on our inside covers with a new font selection. But, when we translated all of those new, little design techniques onto the front cover with the existing nameplate, it just wasn’t as exciting or fresh as the inside pages.
So, we kept trying to push the boundaries a little bit. We had settled on something that was a little different — and it was horizontal. But it just really didn’t seem to pop. When we turned it sideways –– though we had a little bit of reservation in the beginning — I think it worked with what our editor wanted to incorporate with the dot-com.
We already had this period sitting at the end of the Hartford Courant nameplate.
I’d forgotten about that. That’s a historical feature, right?
Shaffer: Yes. It was there on the original nameplate — 200 years ago. It sort of disappeared for a while, then we brought it back with the ’97 redesign.
We wanted to figure out how to incorporate the dot-com. When you turn the masthead sideways and the dot-com sort of rounds the corner, it made good sense.
You maintained a classical feel with the nameplate typography. Your paper is one of the oldest in the nation. (It was first published in 1764.) But the vertical nameplate with the dot-com at the top also allows you to use a prominent refer to your Web site.
How long did this whole redesign process take?
Shaffer: This was a very fast redesign. We didn’t have time to do focus groups. So, the feeling about the masthead has been coming from within the newspaper.
We didn’t get to prototype as many covers as we would like with this masthead. I believe it will work and my editors believe it will work. So, we’re going forward with it — big, brave and bold.
When did you get started?
Shaffer: We started around the middle of June. We probably didn’t really get going until around the Fourth of July, just after.
The timing of the redesign was based on what?
Shaffer: The staff reductions and changes over the summer. So this redesign is sort of a necessity as much as something that we really wanted to do, eventually. The cuts were the reason that we did speed up and go into full gear.
The redesign was something we’d been thinking about and toying with for a while. We were trying to figure out how we would approach that. And then, when the staff reductions came down, it was like, “Well, there you go.”
Are you ready for the first edition?
Shaffer: Well, we had Paul Newman pass away (Friday). And he was a resident of Connecticut. So, now we’re scrambling to change the beautiful centerpiece we had planned.
I hadn’t made the connection that Paul Newman lived in Connecticut! I’m sure you’re going to have a lot of people picking up the paper Sunday.
Shaffer: Yes, I think so!
The Oklahoman
What are you most excited about with the redesign?
Yvette Walker: Do I have to pick just one? There are three huge things.
OK. Three.
Walker: Three: the size of the paper, the use of color and a new way to present information through tighter writing.
You really can’t ignore the size of the paper; it’s getting narrower — to a 44-inch web. I believe we’re the first U.S. paper to go 44 inches. That’s a really big part of it. So I can’t leave that out.
Walker: And then, the color. Obviously, we’ve been a color newspaper for years. But we’ve never used color as a navigational tool before. And the color with the new design has a “wow” factor.
Then, the third thing is the writing. We’re focusing on writing tighter — more concise news and information for the readers. That’s really an integral part of this redesign.
We’ve really been talking a lot with the staff about the way we’re going to write stories and the way we’re going to present the news — which is important in this design. We’ve worked with Mario Garcia and Kelly Frankeny on the design.
How have these ideas about tighter writing been introduced to the staff?
Walker: There has been a lot of discussion and training. We’ve had writers’ brown bags, held by the reporters.
Have readers had a glimpse of the redesign?
Walker: Yes, we’ve had eight different focus groups, four in April and four in July.
The first group got an early draft. Surprisingly, everyone took to the new size. No one had a problem with it. They spread it out on the table. They said that they liked the fact that they could hold it open and not bother the person next to them. They liked the portable size and the fact that they could take it to places that they couldn’t before — like the doctor’s office. We heard a lot of that.
We’ll have a reader’s guide in the paper and information about the redesign on our site.
Is the paper also shallower?
Walker: No, it’s the same depth.
If you were to use a word or two to describe the paper before the redesign and after, what would they be?
Walker: Let’s see, I’m spreading out (Friday’s)’s paper … we actually had a great front page (Friday), a great photo. I would say the word I’d choose is “traditional” for (Friday). You’ve got a skybox; you’ve got a centerpiece story with a sidebar. You’ve got a couple of other stories on the page and some refers. So, I’d say it’s a traditional presentation.
Starting Monday, I would say “reader-friendly.” You will have a lead story and you will also have a visual lead. Sometimes, that will be the same thing. Then, you have many more entry points to the paper on page one — through skybox, rail and promos at the bottom.
How long had it been since you last redesigned?
Walker: We redesigned in 2003 — so not that long ago. But, before that, it had been years — 15 or 20 years!
In 2003, we dropped the word “Daily” from the name. We went from The Daily Oklahoman to The Oklahoman. We did a few other things, of course. But this design is certainly the most different that this paper has looked. It certainly will surprise people. I really hope and think they’ll like it.
