Newspaper Redesign – Is That Fiddling While Rome Burns?

Philip M. Stone February 26, 2009

The biggest question facing print publishers these days is how to claw back circulation – not readers but circulation -- in other words what will it take to get lost readers back to their morning newsprint fix?

A lot of newspapers have gone through the redesign route – think of Tribune and what it did to all its papers before going into Chapter 11 – but at the end of the day Tribune still ended up in bankruptcy and there is no clear indication that a change in design brought readers back. Ask readers why they left their print newspaper and have any really said, “I didn’t like its design”?

But publishers seemingly are leaving nothing to chance so there’s a whole lot of reinvention going on out there -- the trend seems to be for bigger headlines with larger photos and graphics. Is that because it is more attractive or because editorial has been so decimated there’s not so much text and the space needs to be filled by other means?

The trend now seems to be to go through a complete redesign and then tweak it about three years later. According to Mario Garcia, perhaps the world’s most respected newspaper designer, “Constant evolution is better than paralysis for the sake of tradition.” A recent good example is at Le Monde in Paris which went through a major makeover in 2005, although interestingly it did not invite that design team back for the 2009 tweaks, perhaps also a sign of how budgets are not what they once were. 

Garcia recently blogged some ideas about newspaper redesign that deserve a wider dissemination.  Much of it sounds like plain common sense, including perhaps the most important point – that the success or failure of gaining readers can really still depend on what’s on page 1.  The keyword in all of this: “navigation”.

Garcia believes that people are not willing to spend nearly as much time as they once did trying to find things. They are used to the Internet guiding them where they want to go and they expect the same from their print newspaper – especially on the front page, but it is a concept that needs to be carried out throughout the paper.

He also subscribes to the less is best theory. The fact is that readers today probably want a shorter read so get rid of the stuff that few people look at – columns that have been around for years but have little relativity in today’s world and the like, and keep stories shorter. It’s harsh, and it’s always difficult to cut but it’s an exercise one needs to go through, often. Editors these day need to take a close look at every article, every feature they run and ask themselves – “could we have done without that and if we did need it was it too wordy?” 

A lesson this writer learned many years ago is that while for journalists it’s just great to ramble on and on, for the user it is a very different story. Then a UPI manager, he wrote glowingly to his subscribers that because of a technological breakthrough UPI would be delivering the news at a speed 50% faster than before and the really good news was that would mean 50% more news for the same money! Imagine how it felt to get back client responses saying this was terrible – their copy desks were already drowning with the news flow already delivered and the last thing they needed was more!

Well, it’s the same with reading newspapers today. We don’t need to be drowning in content so the role of the editor, probably more important now than ever, is to make sure we do get the right content at the right length. Having struggled with that for many years it certainly is easier said than done, but done it must be!

The other main tip that many newspapers seem to be following these days is to consolidate content – less sections can possibly mean less press runs, and it cuts back on newsprint, too. But messing with where readers are used to finding news is really a big deal – think of yourself in the supermarket where you have shopped for 20 years and suddenly a new manager changes everything around so the aisle where you were used to buy paper towels now is devoted to greeting cards. You really get aggravated, especially if there is nothing to tell you where you can now find those paper towels.

Well it’s the same with newspapers, it’s aggravating not to suddenly find what you were used to finding in a specific place, but readers do get over it assuming they are given the necessary navigation tools and plenty of warning of what is going to happen.

A good example came from the San Francisco Chronicle that introduced a new design at the beginning of the month. Readers were told, “The Bay Area section will be combined with the Business section, which will start on the back cover every weekday. (Business has been on the back of the Sports section in Monday and Tuesday editions.) The Editorial and Opinion pages will move to the back of the main news section, where they appear in many large daily newspapers.”

Those are major changes and some people got lost and complained, especially the older readers set in their ways, but change must come, even to their daily read.

And yes, readers will not hesitate to let you know when they don’t like change. In London The Times redesigned its big Saturday edition and more than 1,000 gave some feedback within just a few days. The Times accompanied its redesign with another thing sure to favor readers – it reduced its price by 38% for a limited time -- and to make sure the word got out it invested in a big TV campaign.

That kind of TV campaign is common in the UK but is seriously lacking with most US newspapers that don’t believe in budgeting for promotion. As a general manager of a major US metropolitan daily told ftm not long ago, “The only reason a manager puts promotion into the budget in the first place is so that when the publisher goes through the first budget exercise and says he wants x millions taken out, then the first to go out is promotion and hopefully most other costs can be saved.”

So FTM countered and said that then during the good times when financials weren’t so difficult then promotion has a good chance of getting through? “Of course not,” the GM responded. “If times are good, then you don’t need promotion!”

That’s a mindset that obviously has to change. If newspapers are going to redesign to show a better face then shouldn’t those readers who no longer get the daily newspaper be told also of the change?  And that means house ads won’t do the trick. A lot of promotion on the newspaper’s web site is a good place to start, but also other media, too. If print wants readers back then it has to tell them where they now get their news fix.

The message, of course, is that print has invested and made a better product and it’s time to come back and give it a try.

See also in ftm Knowledge...

The Paper Its Printed On

Newsprint, printing presses and page design are the basic components of the print media. The ftm Knowledge file tells the story. Includes 21 articles. 47 pages PDF (November 2008)

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