Beacon-News of Aurora, Ill., redesigns as a tab
The Beacon-News of Aurora, Ill. — a 27,238-circulation daily in the western suburbs of Chicago — switched to a tabloid format Monday.
On the left is Saturday’s penultimate broadsheet edition. On the right is Monday’s debut tab front:
This is the paper where VizEds founder Robb Montgomery spent a few years, after he left the Chicago Tribune but before he began designing page one for the Chicago Sun-Times.
A closer look at the new page one:
A press release about the new design reports the Beacon-News‘ web site has been beefed up with more breaking local news. Readers can also get news updates via text messages.
The release mentions the Beacon-News will receive 32 awards in the state press association’s Excellence in News contest this year. It’ll also receive 17 awards in the state Associated Press contests.
Rick Nagel, vice president for editorial for Fox Valley Publications, writes:
A great deal of the credit has to go to Jeff Frosch, our design team leader. It’s all in-house, all the time.
There are so many others who contributed, and we owe more than a few polite nods to prototyping done previously for The Courier-News tab conversion.
We still have a learning curve for the tab front page, but the learning is fun.
Here is Tuesday’s front:
A new ad campaign will focus on the switch to tab format, proclaiming the newly remade paper is “Easy to hold. Hard to put down.”