Cincinnati's new look revealed

I made a pretty good living as a page designer. But if I ran a newspaper in 2012 and was told I could trade all my page designers for reporters and photographers, I'd absolutely do so.

I like the look and the format. Good to see a newspaper taking a chance on something. If I had a choice of a 7-day-a-week magazine/tab/whatever or a 3-day-a-week broadsheet, I'd prefer the former.

 

Looks to me like a designer doing many sections, hence the templates.
And what font is that? Arial? My god, looks super cheap. You'd be surprised what better typographical choices could do for this.

And FNF wants to eliminate the desk, eh? And still put out a print product someone will pay for?

 

Don't really have a comment on the redesign (it looks fine, but redesigns mean nothing anymore).

But, boy, do I despise newspaper "e-editions". Nothing else I choose to read on a computer is formatted like that — whether it's HTML 4/5 or PDF or Kindle/EPUB or something else — and it's very distracting to zoom in/out, turn pages, try to find the sports section, etc. I had the same problem with Sporting News Today back when I was receiving that in my e-mail. Can't imagine anyone else finds "e-editions" to be easy to read. I find it to be an incredible waste of resources.

 

I love using e-editions.

I also love the re-design.

I guess I'm just a big ball of rainbows today.

 

My only thing about e-editions... and I really love using them myself... is I wish someone would say "Look, you can create more content." Instead of replicating your print edition, add extra pages. You don't have the newsprint/space issues online, theoretically, so offer bonus coverage.

 

Not to sidetrack the topic of the thread, but I know my shop wants to do that. They are pushing e-editions hard, and there was talk of doing the weekly football tab as e-edition only.

 

You make it sound like Gannett would replace one with the other. I'm thinking the eye would be more on simply eliminating positions, not shuffling them around, unfortunately.

 

Gannett has design hubs, JRoyal. No layout is done in Cincinnati; it's shipped to Louisville.

 

The prototype on Cincinnati.Com is not the final one. There have been a couple of major changes, including section fronts and the fonts.
Also in one of those things you have to love about Gannett, the paper will be published 100 miles to the north (Columbus) and is being designed 90 miles to the west (Louisville).

 

I really like the way it looks.

I also dug some of the unconventional advertising placement and design, but I guess I'm just weird that way.

My first inclination is to track down come print copies once it gets rolling to see how it looks in hand.

Is Columbus doing the same thing?

 

I know. My fear (for Gannett designers at least) is that the other papers that come from that hub (and maybe others) won't be too far behind in the conversion to this format, which will lead to fewer designers since the layout is pretty cookie cutter, at least in this mock-up. I hope I'm wrong, but recent years always have me thinking the worst.

 

That looks almost exactly like what our company wants our papers to switch to.