Charles Apple

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution isn’t the only paper introducing a redesign this week. The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., launched a redesign on Monday.

On the left is Friday’s A1. On the right is Tuesday’s new front:

The big talking point with this redesign, though: A spadea every day.

Here is a prototype of the spadea, wrapped around a prototype A1:

Patriot-News editor David Newhouse was kind enough to walk us through the changes:

When we began this project, nearly two years ago, we vowed not to create a redesign that simply re-arranged the deck chairs on the you-know-what. We had watched one redesign after another focused on fonts or navigation or color, or some cool new skybox, or giant art — without addressing the fact that people’s information needs in the digital age have changed.

This redesign was completely research driven. In a blue-sky way, we asked people what role a print paper could best play in their daily lives today.

The design was done by our news design editors, Chris Boehke and Tracy Cox.

We think they did a great job of creating a clean, simple look that showcases the content, not a lot of distracting page furniture. Our focus groups called it fresh, contemporary, and easier to read. Nevertheless, I jokingly call this a ‘stealth’ redesign because the newspaper is actually far more different than it might appear at first glance. We intentionally kept most fonts and styles. It is the content, and how it is presented, that changed.

In our research – through phone surveys, focus groups and usability surveys (people circled exactly what they read in 850 papers) – we found that readers wanted:

• to catch up fast on “yesterday’s news.” They had heard most of it, and wanted quick ways to scan whatever they might have missed.
• more local news.
• more, not less, in-depth reporting. They valued what local newspapers could do uniquely well, like local watchdog journalism and great human interest. But they couldn’t tell these apart from yesterday’s “old news” stories.
• useful information. Gone are fuzzy, forgettable feature stories that were not important to people’s lives.

What else is gone? The 15-25 inch hard news story that gives people far more detail than they want about old news. We tell reporters: think short or long. Except for a few top stories, yesterday’s news is briefed (6.5 inches max). This leaves room for centerpiece treatments on inside pages to showcase our original, enterprise reporting.

Same template for nation/world news. Yesterday’s hard news is briefed. Analyses or “behind the headlines” stories get centerpiece treatments to let readers know this goes beyond what they saw on TV.

As for the spadea, David writes:

What sets this apart from the “five-minute Herald” approach? Ours is a pull-off (one-sheet) spadea that busy readers can grab-and-go to read over breakfast or coffee. It’s two sides, enough to truly encapsulate a quick read of the entire paper. And it has some unique content not in the main paper, like “what ever happened with?” story updates.

Here is Monday’s debut spadea:

You’re seeing the front and back here, as it’ll appear after the reader pulls it off the page and unfolds it. You’re seeing top story briefs on the right and an ad — the equivalent of a three-column — on the bottom.

On the left of this prototype are tips from the Patriot-News‘ popular gardening columnist, features briefs and puzzles.

The inside of the spadea features briefs of local, nation, world and sports stories. Deaths and the lottery numbers run across the bottom here:

An online Q&A posted by the paper elaborates on the spadea:

Q. What’s the point of the Patriot-News Express? I’m not used to seeing a sheet of news wrapped around the front page of the paper.

A. Many readers told us that they don’t always have time for the paper in the morning. They asked if we could offer a quick summary of the news to glance at quickly over breakfast or during a coffee break – then they could look at the rest of the paper later, when they had time. That’s the purpose of the Patriot-News Express. You can just pull it off and go­- and still get the information you want most.

Q. Did you take news pages away to create the Express?

A. No, we added the Express page to the paper. We did not take anything away from the rest of the paper to create the Express.

Here’s a closer look at today’s front. Notice, please, the meet-the-new-spadea box, reversed out of a blue arrow that points to the spadea itself. Very clever:

Spadeas sound terrific, but in practice, they’re more difficult to deal with than you might think.

For example: the spadea covers up half the front. So single-copy readers won’t see the “Hershey’s hoops bid” refer at all, until they pick up the paper and remove the wrap. Likewise, readers won’t see the Pontiac story or enough of the swine flu centerpiece to make sense of it.

We asked David some follow-up questions about his spadea:

Q. The spadea would seem to be labor-intensive. From where, might I ask, are you getting the manpower to put this together each night?

A. God? We have a full-time person devoted to the Express spadea. Don’t ask me how. We have a stellar desk.

Q. Will your A1 designers be working each night with the spadea in mind? That’s how they do it at the Pilot — Each Friday during the Summer — and on holiday weekends — the designer will attempt to divide the top of A1 into two three-column segments to allow for the spadea.

A. Yes and no. We will favor a 2-and-3 col layout at the top of A1 so the spadea more or less nearly covers the 2-col story (especially when that’s the story featured on the spadea). But there are no rigid rules. Tho we would almost never duplicate the spadea front and the A1 centerpiece.

Speaking of that front page, David writes:

Yes, we know, most redesigns go through contortions to redesign their front. It’s all about the front. Front, front front. We actually found that our front was very well-read and very well-received. We didn’t mess with it much. It was inside the paper that we lost people.

Here’s the prototyped front page:

In fact, there are two additions here: One is the addition of summaries to the tops of stories. The other is a new daily feature story on someone in the community.

We asked David:

Q. What happens when huge, huge news breaks? Do you dump the spadea? Do you dump “Connections”?

A. I suspect we’d keep the spadea but rip up the template and devote it to the big story. There are no sacred cows on A1, including Connections.

We’re also noticing new color labels and — on this prototype, at least — a really interesting six-column-wide “coming tomorrow” promo across the bottom.

The Q&A addresses a major change in the redesign: Bringing the local pages to the front of the daily paper.

Q. Why did you move the Local & State news up front?

A. The overwhelming majority of our readers say that they read The Patriot-News, first and foremost, for local news. Putting local news first allows us to give it more prominence and, when necessary, more space.

Here’s the old local front compared with the new local page on 3A:

A closer look at the new page. Again, this is from Monday’s debut edition:

David writes:

People cried out for indexes and other ways to help them quickly find articles of interest. We created a local story index on our Local & State front (now on page A3). And like other papers, we now have story summaries below each hed.

An older prototype of the nation and world page:

In our research in which people circled what they read, we found an astounding fact: briefs inside the A section were being read at 2-3 times the rate as stories. This was upside-down, Bizarro universe stuff — these were our leftovers, our least important stories. It dramatically illustrated readers’ hunger for concise hard news.

We wanted to create a brief format that said “this is significant news, but we’re presenting succinctly for you.” With pumped-up heads and art, we jokingly call these superbriefs, or briefs on steroids. They are the main way that we deliver yesterday’s news fast, and they allow us to pack the paper with more news than before.

We wanted to showcase what readers told us newspapers do best – enterprise. Inside centerpiece stories, now on multiple pages, get a “Behind the Headlines” tag and lead-in text to help readers know that this is not a longer version of yesterday’s news. Local stories by our best-known reporters get a headshot as well, and lead-in such as “Jan Murphy found that, budget cutbacks or not, the perks at the Liquor Control Board just keep on flowing.”

We asked David:

Q. How often do you see a “Behind the Headlines” piece running?

A. Every enterprise story of some length (say, 15+) that is not on the front page gets a label such as Behind the Headlines or Analysis. The idea is to cue the reader that this is not the straight news they may have already seen on TV. For example, in our tight Tuesday news section we had a mix of 5 local and wire.

The paper’s promotional materials are touting more interactivity with the community on the editorial pages:

We’re hoping there won’t be a lot of changes to the sports section, already a tabloid. We love this sports section. We bring copies home every time we travel to Harrisburg:

Sure enough, David tells us:

We left sports alone other than to conform general style to the new look.

Good man.

David writes:

Our features section is reincarnated as Your Life – 100 percent concise, practical tips on everything from local entertainment to local shopping.

A before-and-after look at the features section:

Features include Things to Do Today, What’s for Dinner, Tipsheet, and a local Question of the Day (our first is about a new puzzle but a typical QOD might be “Where can I take my kids on a rainy day?”)

A closer look at the new Your Life:

Here’s a prototype of the news Sunday features front:

The Thursday tabloid entertainment section will receive a gentle facelift:

David writes:

Go is redesigned to eliminate nearly all “stories” (other than columnists and reviews) and give the reader more quick hit recommendations. A lot of good entertainment tabs already do that. But it fits with our useful-info-fast meme.

A new set of zoned editions will appear on Fridays:

Go here to view a 30-second promotional spot for the new redesign. Watch a series of videos here with David, publisher John Kirkpatrick and two other newsroom managers discussing the redesign.

Find a story about the redesign here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 9:01 am and is filed under Redesigns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.