Carolyn Washburn:
Thousands of you have seen a copy of the prototype of our new print edition coming this fall. We’ve taken your feedback through surveys, focus groups, emails and at community groups. Today I want to walk you through the changes we’ve made as a result of your feedback and additional research.
The biggest change is that we will design to have much greater visual impact. We know from our research that people are overwhelmed with information. Everything starts to run together. There is risk that the important information, the most moving storytelling, the most exclusive work we do can get lost in the shuffle. We don’t want you to be able to walk past that stack of papers in the store or that copy on your kitchen counter without feeling you need to pick it up. We know that young adults are more compelled by bold visuals, and we all want young adults to be engaged citizens. The community will be so much better off if you are informed and involved.
The front page of each section will showcase one or two “cover stories.” Instead of starting three to five stories on each section front (and continuing them all to different inside pages), we will have the cover story and a couple of other headlines that lead you to the full stories inside. We will still have the same number of stories in the paper; they just won’t all start on the section covers. Most of those stories will be contained to either a page or facing pages so you can start the story on the left and finish it on the right. Readers have told us it is more convenient to start stories without jumping around inside the sections.
We will make sure these pages continue to have the well-researched reporting and informational graphics that give you context and beautiful photos that put you behind the scenes or connect you with another neighbor in your community.
We had other interesting conversations with readers in this process to identify things for which people in this community have the most passion. We will showcase stories and photographs about those topics in a big way in our new print edition.
For example, we have already been publishing a series of stories called Passion for Place. These are stories about places that have shaped our communities’ personalities, places from which we have lessons to learn and places that have been important over time but now need extra attention to ensure they are vibrant for next generations. Every time we publish one of these stories, readers send me appreciative emails and ideas for other places we should write about. I hope you will share yours.
We’ll introduce a new page in the Sunday Forum section in the new print edition called Ideas in Action. Readers told us they were hungry for leadership – hungry for ideas but also hungry for action. So we’re inviting people to send us essays about actions they have taken in the spirit of big ideas.
We’re calling the third passion “inspired locals.” We were moved by the number of people we talked to who are creating things – artists, foodies, entrepreneurs and social activists, for example. We want to write about them and share what they are creating. Reporter John Faherty will take the lead on this for us and start a weekly column and blog. Reporters like arts writers Janelle Gelfand and Jackie Demaline and food writer Polly Campbell will write about inspired locals, as well. I think you’re really going to enjoy their stories, and I hope you’ll share ideas.
Most of the features that you already enjoy will continue to be where you expect in the new print edition. We will still have separate sections so you can still pass them around. We’ll add a Good News section in the Sunday newspaper, as I’ve mentioned before. We’re changing the format of the weekly TV book back to the more convenient one readers preferred a few years ago. And we absolutely will maintain and build on the local in-depth reporting that sets us apart from other media.
You can get a sneak preview of our latest prototype of the print edition for The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Kentucky Enquirer at libraries and by paging through an electronic replica online. Please let us know what you think and what you need from us. We’re here to serve.
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