7 Responses

1. Kelsey Schnell, Creative Developer says:

   April 6, 2010 at 4:52 pm

   Wow. So you’re mov­ing from a Tab to Broad­sheet ques­tion is, I believe, con­trary to most other schools that are mov­ing from Broad to Tab.

   Cou­ple of things we like about our tab is the ease of design… we can change stuff with­out too much trouble.

   It fits eas­ily in text­books and backpacks.

   It’s cheap for us.

   What are some rea­sons you are think­ing about mov­ing to broad?
2. dmacleod says:

   April 7, 2010 at 3:15 pm

   I like the six col­umn look; it’s more sym­met­ri­cal. We can also run larger pictures.

   Also, a quar­ter page ad is a true quar­ter page in a six-column page and takes up less edi­to­r­ial con­tent. Right now, a quar­ter page eats three columns, which makes lay­out awk­ward. It often feels like we’re cram­ming con­tent around ads, mak­ing it harder to cre­atively design a page.

   Plus: it’s broad­sheet, yo. It looks and feels awe­some. It also costs a lit­tle less.
3. Kelsey Schnell, Creative Developer says:

   April 8, 2010 at 3:04 pm

   I think those are some good rea­sons. I agree the feel of a broad­sheet is nice.

   One of the things I would be sure to empha­size would be the change in qual­ity of the con­tent, pho­tos and sto­ries. If they are able to main­tain the same level of per­for­mance then mov­ing to a cheaper option, broad­sheet, could be a good one.

   Are you hav­ing any luck with adver­tis­ing rates? Or are you think­ing you’ll just change them rel­a­tive to the space they now occupy?

   Why so much con­cern with the phys­i­cal paper when so much is mov­ing to the web?

   (This is the type of stuff col­lege news­pa­pers should be talk­ing about {among other things} I’m excited to hear more.)
4. Michael Westendorf says:

   April 13, 2010 at 9:31 am

   I was going to com­ment exactly what Kelsey said in the first post. I think the only “flex­i­bil­ity” one gets out of a broad­sheet is in one’s arms when try­ing to read it. Reminds me of a recent snip­pet from an arti­cle we released a short while back:

   “We put a lot of research and thought into a new for­mat for the paper based upon reader feed­back,” Mr. Wes­t­en­dorf said, “We wanted it to be large enough to com­mand a pres­ence, but small enough to man­age. Today’s read­ers don’t want bulky broad­sheets. We think came up with a great com­pro­mise and we look for­ward to hear­ing what our read­ers have to say about the redesign.”
5. dmacleod says:

   April 13, 2010 at 8:56 pm

   This is part of a two-pronged redesign of our brand. We just switched to Word­Press and I’m push­ing for pub­lish­ing to the web daily and doing more online mul­ti­me­dia con­tent. But our online read­er­ship is mainly alumni, fac­ulty and mem­bers of the gen­eral com­mu­nity. Stu­dents read the phys­i­cal paper more (usu­ally on breaks from classes and while eat­ing in the stu­dent cen­ter). The paper prod­uct is our bread and but­ter; we make no money off the web­site. So it’s impor­tant to make the print ver­sion as good as it can be. In my opin­ion, that means larger, bet­ter designed pages.

   My chief con­cern is how it will affect ad rates.
   We have a very small ad team that fights weekly for a slim share of a small media mar­ket heav­ily sat­u­rated with free weekly papers. Local busi­nesses used to pay­ing a cer­tain amount for a 1/4 page will likely balk at a price increase if a 1/4 page sud­denly is larger and there­for more expen­sive. While we have a very spe­cific mar­ket that some busi­nesses find attrac­tive, we also have a small cir­cu­la­tion (3,000). I’m wor­ried increas­ing the cost per col­umn inch may drive adver­tis­ers to other papers with a wider reach.
6. Michael Westendorf says:

   April 15, 2010 at 9:02 am

   I would argue that larger pages do not auto­mat­i­cally con­sti­tute a “bet­ter prod­uct”. I also believe that today’s read­ers don’t want to tan­gle with bulky broadsheets.

   It also seems to me that the busi­ness argu­ment of: “Plus: it’s broad­sheet, yo. It looks and feels awe­some.” would only fly with a news­pa­per that is sub­si­dized by stu­dent dol­lars and immune to gen­uine, researched-driven, busi­ness concerns.
7. Kelsey Schnell, Creative Developer says:

   April 15, 2010 at 10:49 pm

   What’s the cost dif­fer­ence between tab and broad­sheet with your printer? Are you on cam­pus or is it a local pub­lisher get­ting their fin­gers dirty.

   With ad rates, if the change isn’t sig­nif­i­cant, maybe keep­ing them mostly the same OR cre­at­ing adver­tis­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties on the web would be a good option.

   We run a word­press CMS for http://www.fsutorch.com and have used some pretty sim­ple online ads to cover the costs of web host­ing. It’s pos­si­ble that the increase in print costs could be pitched with a web ad as well.

   For exam­ple, buy a quarter-page ad for $200 get an online ban­ner ad at no addi­tional cost!

   If you have an in house ad team mak­ing the sales, do you have in house design­ing ads as well? In that case, you’re just putting them to size and upload­ing them (maybe to link to the advertiser’s site when clicked).

   This is really a tough call. I think if you’re going for aes­thet­ics with your paper, you may have to increase funds some­where else. If this just makes good busi­ness sense, then expect it to be hard. If it were easy, the rest of us would be doing it already.

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