Thursday, June 15, 2006

Print Star changes

A heads up for my devoted (?) blog readers.

We will be making a few tweaks in the print Star in response to some reader complaints. Namely:

1) We will return the obits back toward their original form. All of the personal information will be in paragraph form. Only the details on the funeral, burial, etc. will be in the bulleted form.
2) We will bump up the size of the type we use with graphics, lists, calendars, etc.
3) We will replace our Page 2A celebrity news with a Top Nation/World story of the day feature. We have added so much local to the paper, it often squeezes out national and international news. This will ensure that at least the top story of the day will be in that spot.

We will be tweaking some other design elements, which you probably will not notice (some leading, fonts, etc.).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the change to the obits. I overheard a lady at the beauty shop the other day saying she hoped she didn't die anytime soon. (obviously, she isn't fond of the way the obits had changed) The new look of the paper is really growing on me. I didn't like it at first, but I think I rushed to judgement. Keep up the good work. Also like the use of local faces and stories!

Anonymous said...

Off the subject. Have you looked at the "High School Grads Where are You lately? I saw some pretty bad language on one. Looks like some kind of web advertisements getting on there.

Anonymous said...

On the obits, the recent change to format has improved this section. One more change is needed. The person's name should be in Bold format rather than the dates just below the name. Also, one extra blank line before each name would help. At present, it is difficult to skip from name to name. Names on front page is very helpful.

Skip Foster said...

Yes, you are right and we're trying to update our "style sheets" to make that exact change.

Basically, we've found how we wantt to change it, now we just need to get the technology squared away to implement. Hopefully, it will be in place for Saturday's paper.

Anonymous said...

I think that the changes you are outlining here for the paper are good ones. The Obits and the page 2a elements were 2 places that I would have offered suggestions on, but you're already on it.

I like the Get-to-know feature as well as the Know-It-All..Love the historical items you do on MOndays, also.

The new, more concise format for local news stories works well, too. There are certain stories that might beg more details, but usually not. In the old format, some stories seemed to have too much.

All of your efforts to improve our hometown paper are appreciated!