Cincinnati's new look revealed

I don't think Cincinnati gave a date when this was going to happen, but Sunday's Enquirer revealed the paper's new look and the changes.

I've been hard on some stuff Cincy's done in the past... but this looks really good in concept. Link below. You can preview the new paper by clicking on the black screen. What do you think?

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/enquirermedia/2012/06/12/issuu/

 

It looks like a weekly business magazine.

 

What IJAG said. Are they going to a tab?

 

It's hard to explain the format. Not quite Berliner, but like a cross between a tab and a magazine. I don't have any investment in it, obviously... just nice to see someone investing in print like that.

 

I guess this means they are being printed in Columbus now.

I kind of like the idea, but we aren't likely to do it. I asked the publisher about it during a q-and-a. Apparently it is 10 times more expensive to tweak the depth of the page than it is to retrofit to adjust the width of the page. He gave specific figures for doing either, which of course would vary by how many presses your paper uses and how many units each has.

 

Investing in print? This is entirely a cost-cutting measure. They're saving a ton of newsprint and shrinking the editorial space. Gannett Company continues to use the Cincinnati Enquirer as its lab rat.

 

I don't want to sound like a Gannett mouthpiece here, but I've heard the space isn't shrinking. And it looks more appealing visually than the current Cincy paper does.

And yes, I consider it an investment in print, especially in light of what some other companies are doing. Just my thought.

 

It's usually an investment to cut costs. But Gannett is piggybacking on Columbus' retrofit.

 

Thank God. I thought somebody had screwed around with the Reds' uniforms.

 

I'd pick it up ...
1. If I lived there
2. If it was free

 

Looking through the prototype, looks like outside of a couple of pages, minimal design skills will be needed. Always good to see a company cutting out a need for a segment of the newsroom (in this case, page designers). And I hate the ads floating in the middle of pages.

 

Speaking as a former newspaper guy who has transitioned into magazines, I really like this new format. Granted, you can't get the full sense of what the product will be based on a computer-screen replica, but it looks very inviting to readers. It's absolutely not a newspaper design, but that may not be a bad thing in an era where newspaper readership is dwindling and magazine readership is generally holding steady (and, in many cases, growing) across the board.

At first blush, I like the idea of an NATION IN BRIEF page adjacent to the NATION IN DEPTH page -- news you can read quickly and something you can (sort of) sink your teeth into. I also like the idea that the columnists get a full Page 2 for their ramblings since they can't get on the section front any longer.

There are plenty of things that aren't so great, of course. I don't like the bastard ad configurations, but, hey, that's reality nowadays -- even the broadsheets are doing this. I also have some concerns about the prototype vs. daily reality. The prototype makes good use of cutout images and other magazine-layout treatments ... but I wonder if the design team can keep that up on a daily basis. If not, the product is just going to look like a newspaper stuffed into a magazine format, and that would be bad.

That said, it's been a long time since I've been excited about any kind of newspaper renovation -- especially since there have been lots of bad ones -- but this one intrigues me greatly. I'll be watching with interest.