Charles Apple

Today, the Star-Bulletin of Honolulu converts from a broadsheet to a smaller size.

The Star-Bulletin doesn’t send pages to the Newseum, so we have no broadsheet for comparison. All we have for you is today’s front:

Publisher Dennis Francis and editor Frank Bridgewater write in today’s edition:

Our new format is known in most of the world as a compact, as opposed to our previous broadsheet format. The Society of Newspaper Design recently honored its five “World’s Best Designed”" newspapers for 2008 — and four are compacts.

…We will present the news in a lively, organized, easy-to-read paper, and we might look, at times, more like a magazine. But while we might look and feel different, our commitment to news has not changed.

Here is the new page two:

The new nation and world page shows one of the weaknesses of the tabloid format: If you don’t edit short, your pages can get very, very grey. This one, however, contains a breakout that might possibly be an interesting sidebar read:

Despite the new compact format, the Star-Bulletin says it will continue to organize its interior into sections. The paper reports:

Our new Local news section includes a two-page spread with feature stories, neighbor island news, and “Police/Fire” and “Newswatch” items.

These inside local pages reflect new days for old standing features:

The Star-Bulletin reports:

Views & Voices, a new section conceived as a miniature newsmagazine within the Star-Bulletin, includes our opinions, commentaries and “Letters to the Editor” in a visually exciting mix. Also added is a news-focus space called Insight, running Sundays through Fridays, to provide more depth and analysis on issues.

Each edition will include pages devoted to biz. Today is Monday, so the biz section is dominated by weekly personal finance pages:

Inside Monday biz pages:

Features pages will shuffle slightly, with the Sunday restaurant column moving to Wednesdays — food day — and the entertainment HiLife section moves to Thursdays.

And, of course, here’s the sports “front”…

…and a sample inside sports page:

Find a more detailed page-by-page description in a slideshow posted today by the Star-Bulletin. Look here for the story by the publisher and editor.

Here’s a video promo for the format change:

—
UPDATE:

Read a review by a local guy here.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 7:52 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.