Charles Apple

Ray Stern of the Phoenix New Times writes today:

The East Valley Tribune rolled out its new and improved look, plowing deep in tabloid territory and essentially ending–by design, anyway–a traditional-style newspaper that has published in Mesa for more than 100 years.

It’s not all tabloid; the sports, Nation/World and classified sections that come tucked inside the tabloid wrap are still (somewhat incongruently) in broadsheet format. But, from now on, the paper’s main look is, well, distinctly more New Times than New York Times.
The Tribune is a scrappy underdog newspaper that’s been going head-to-head with the Arizona Republic in the great suburbia that exists east of Phoenix. Like every other daily newspaper in the country, the Trib struggles to hold on to a shrinking number of subscribers and is desperate to try something new. Maybe this will work. Maybe not.

One big problem is, given the competing philosophies and personalities at the paper, the Trib will have trouble deciding if it wants to be the New York Daily News or the Ahwatukee Foothills News.

That’s a very attractive paper. Or, at least, this sample seems attractive.

Anyone out there from Mesa? If so, contact us, please. We’d love to see more samples and perhaps give you a thorough grilling ask you a few simple questions.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this change, according to Stern:

An issue is the business model that comes with this new Trib tabloid. The paper’s separate Scottsdale edition went to this new format months ago, and Scottsdale residents can choose between picking up the tabloid for free (which contains most of the local news) or buying the tabloid, national news and sports section together for fifty cents.

Just trying to guess at the logic of this makes my head hurt. This, of course, is why I’ll never be a publisher.

Read Stern’s story — which rambles a bit into an amusing history of tabloids – here.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Innovative ideas, Small papers, Redesigns, Amusing stuff, Industry woes, News design, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.