When you open today's Journal, you will note some design improvements that we hope you will like, but also some changes in how the newspaper is put together -- some of which you may not like initially.
Beginning today, the Monday and Tuesday editions of the Journal each week will be printed in two sections instead of four. You'll find the local news section, or B section, inside the first section of the paper. The second section will combine Sports, Living and Classifieds, with Sports as the cover.
Because we will be folding some of our standard section fronts into each other on Mondays and Tuesdays, we decided to downsize and modernize the section flags at the top of each section. The names will stay the same, except one. Local becomes "local news." The sleeker flags give a little more page space, but the objective was to create flags that look appropriate when the section is inside the paper, as well as when it is a separate section cover.
We've had to trim some pages and features to make this work. For example, there will be an Editorial page on Mondays and Tuesdays, but no Op-Ed page, the page opposite the Editorial page, on those days. Also, on Mondays there will be no Living cover page inside the second section. However, you will still find all the usual features inside, including the daily comics, the TV page and most, if not all, of the standing features, like Sudoku, Horoscope, Bridge and Miss Manners. There will be a Living cover page inside on Tuesdays.
Space in the paper is, of course, what this is about. We are trying to conserve space, or news hole, as far as possible to reduce costs, without causing severe harm to our local content. By combining sections we are able to eliminate a few pages a week, and that small reduction in newsprint equates to significant annual savings.
Another change needs mention. The weekly Market Review stock section, which was free to subscribers who requested it, has been discontinued. The number of readers of the section had dwindled to fewer than 2,000, which made it financially unfeasible to print and distribute. We have beefed up the financial pages on journalnow.com as a result. Go to News and click on Business.
The challenges facing the newspaper industry are well known. And since we are in the business of telling the truth, and you count on us for that, here is the truth. Newspapers are in the midst of a perfect storm, to use an overused cliché. The decline in the national economy, and with it the drop-off in advertising revenue, especially classified advertising revenue, has hit the industry hard. Even before the recent crisis in the markets, changing trends in advertising, particularly the growth of commerce on the Internet, had caused us to trim costs while we adjust to the digital age.
The third point of pressure is the unexpected rapid rise in the cost of newsprint, an increase approaching 50 percent in the past two years, and with more increases to come. The Journal buys paper by the ton, so this is a problem.
We have tried to be careful in how we've trimmed these and other costs here at the Journal. We have a smaller news staff, but we have not reduced our commitment to public-service journalism and to you.
Sincerely,
Carl M. Crothers
Executive Editor
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