This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next blog post is Monday, August 26.
TAKEAWAY: This week, we have witnessed an incredibly impressive comeback for newsprint.
It’s been a good week for print. Yes, as in printing presses, newspaper clippings, the thing you can touch or have your dog deliver to you, and that you can even use to line the bird’s cage or to wrap that fish.
In California, it’s an occasion to celebrate with the birth of a new newspaper, Long Beach Register,complete with printed pages (32 of them in the first issue), and stacks of papers in a box at the intersection of Main Street and that other road.
Also from California, it’s old newspaper clippings passing for Cher’s hair in her new hit video, Woman’s World.
According to reports, the use of the old newspaper clippings is a way for Cher, the iconic entertainer, to answer those who say she is old at 67 and, perhaps like newspapers, a part of another era.
We like Cher’s new song, the video, and the use of the newspaper clips.
We also applaud Orange County Register publisher Aaron Kushner for believing in the power of print.
Both of these happenings are signs that print is NOT dead, and neither is Cher, who seems to make strong comebacks from time to time, transcending generations and having the last laugh for those who think she is an artifact.
Perhaps it is the same for newspapers.
Long Beach Register is born
Welcome to your new local paper, reads the headline on Volume 1, Number 1 of the Long Beach Register.
And if editor Paul Eakins’ wishes come true, that is exactly how it will be: from the news of a boy becoming an Eagle Scout to the opening of the new dog park.
Local news sells, and that’s the formula that publisher Aaron Kushner has used successfully to revive the Orange County Register. He is counting on that to be the case here, too.
The Long Beach Register, which premiered August 19 with a 10,000 press run, will publish Monday through Friday and include 16 or more pages of local news and advertising daily. It will wrap around the Orange County Register so subscribers will get both papers. Seven-day subscribers will receive Long Beach sports and varsity news in the Orange County Register on Saturday and the full Orange County Register on Sunday.
While this is the first expansion for the Orange County Register outside of Orange County under new owners Aaron Kushner and Eric Spitz, we are certain it will not be the last. The relative success of the emphasis on local news for the Register will probably inspire its new owners to take that formula elsewhere.
“We believe that a city with the size and vibrancy of Long Beach should be happy to support a great newspaper of the variety we want to provide,” said Kushner, CEO of Freedom Communications. “If it is, we’ll make healthy money. If it’s not, that’ll be unfortunate for everyone. But we believe we’ll be successful.”
Another two-newspaper town emerges
Competition is likely to set in. In fact, the Long Beach Register is competing with the Long Beach Press-Telegram, which was founded more than a century ago and which maintains an average weekday circulation of about 55,000. There are few two-newspaper towns left in the country, but we have seen the trend resurfacing lately in such cities as New Orleans and Tampa. The Advocate in Baton Rouge (a newspaper that we redesigned about three decades ago) expanded into New Orleans last year after the Times-Picayune eliminated its print edition four days a week.
In my own hometown, Tampa, readers in the Tampa Bay area have seen the venerable St. Petersburg Times turning into the Tampa Bay Times, making an aggressive incursion into Tampa, while The Tampa Tribune premiered The St. Petersburg Tribune early this year, to give The Times some competition in its own turf.
We all know that competition always helps, and readers who live in two-newspaper towns benefit.
It’s about to happen in Long Beach as well. Ron Hasse, publisher of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, told guests at a recent open house in Long Beach that the Press-Telegram plans to add news and sports staff, increase total pages and redo the newspaper’s website.
The design of the Long Beach Register
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The Orange County Register’s community papers, such as Sun Post, above, inspired the design for the new Long Beach Register
I was curious to see what the look and feel would be for the Long Beach Register, so I have been in contact with Helayne Perry,Design Team Leader for the Orange County Register’s
Community News, as well as Matt Murray,lead designer for the Long Beach Register.
“The new daily is basically a bigger city version of our other community newspapers,” Helayne said.
My conversation with Matt included the following questions:
Mario
What was the challenge for you in creating the look & feel for this new product?
Matt:
Coming into the the launch of the Long Beach Register, the decision was made to take our design cues from the new Community sections the Orange County Register launched in November. That formula was created from the mind of deputy editor Rob Curley, who challenged us to combine the tried-and-true community news story with a more cutting-edge design sensibility. Shorter copy, more entry points into stories, more photos, and the freedom to have fun with it all. Rob wants our community papers to be the “newspapers of interesting.” In addition, we are encouraged to take as many chances as we like design-wise. In that sense, we have more freedom than they do on the main paper.
Mario:
What was your biggest challenge?
Matt:
A major hurdle for creating this newspaper was the fact that we had little archival photos from Long Beach. Designing for the smaller, weekly community papers, there is more of an opportunity to share content between neighboring cities’ newspapers. With Long Beach, it stands alone with little to no crossover from the main paper. Knowing that was a little daunting.
Mario:
How much of the Orange County Register’s DNA did you have to maintain?
Matt:
Many of the design cues directly mirror these community newspapers: the style palette and general look is the same. The main difference is the types of stories published in each. Long Beach is bigger than the largest city in Orange County, which is Anaheim. And as with any big city, it’s going to have more newsy stories than some of the sleepier cities in the O.C. So more care has to be taken in presenting the news in that community mindset.
Other small differences include the inclusion of writers mugs in stories rather than bylines, which mimmicks the Orange County Register. But the overall push for hyper-local coverage inundates everything we are doing.
Mario:
I am sure that designers everywhere will want to know what went thru your head as you had the opportunity to CREATE a concept for a printed newspaper design seeing the light of day in 2013???? I, too, would like to know.
Matt:
When I first heard about the idea of launching a newspaper in my hometown of Long Beach, I was ecstatic. I started my professional career at the Press-Telegram back in 1997.
I watched as my hometown paper slowly started to die a death of a thousand cuts, like the majority of other newspapers in the nation. When I finally left the company in 2010, the newspaper had shed the design desk, copy desk, sports staff and photo staff. Little by little, the paper shrunk in size while trying to hang on, using shared copy from sister papers in the Los Angeles Newspaper Group while focusing primarily on the digital side. It’s a familiar story to many of us in the business.
When I came to the Register in April, I was charged with helping launch one of the larger community weeklies into a five-day-a-week publication. After successfully launching The Current, I started hearing rumblings of the possibility the owners Eric Spitz and Aaron Kushner wanted to launch a Long Beach paper. It didn’t take much convincing for me to ask to join. The opportunity to start a brand-new newspaper from scratch? In 2013? In my hometown? Who wouldn’t?
I owe a lot to the Press-Telegram. I met my wife holding the front door for her downstairs. Many of my former colleagues have become close friends, some of which still work there. But there’s the undeniable fact that the readers of Long Beach and surrounding cities were robbed of news coverage. This is an opportunity to make a difference in the Long Beach community again.
Seeing people actually READING the Long Beach Register at my local coffee house fills me with pride. Many of the racks around town seem to run out quickly. The people of Long Beach are starving for news, and they now have a choice.
Mario:
What do you guys answer those who think you may be crazy for starting a print newspaper in 2013?
Matt:
Hearing that this is possibly the first time a brand-new newspaper has been launched in a major city since the end of World War II seems unreal. There seems to be a lot of snarky, vocal naysayers: About how newspapers are dead. About how news is consumed has made newspapers obsolete. About what “a fool’s errand” it is to think this will work. But there also seems to be a lot more people watching quietly, hoping that this game plan of actually ADDING (gasp) resources to the newsroom will bring back readers and advertisers.
In our first edition on Monday, we had 12 full-pages ads in a 32-page book, with two sections. In Fridays’ paper, there’s 14 full-page ads in a 32-page book.
It does appear there’s some life left in newsprint.
We agree with you, Matt.
And so as summer of 2013 comes to an end soon, let’s celebrate print this weekend dancing to the sound of the new Cher hit song while discovering an issue of the Long Beach Register.
Of related interest:
Meet the Long Beach Register staff
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/long-521698-meet-beach.html
O.C. Register owner Aaron Kushner bets heavily on print
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oc-register-kushner-20130820,0,4386434.story
Behind the Scenes: Newsroom look at the launch of Long Beach Register
Long Beach Register, new daily newspaper, hits Long Beach newsstands
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/business&id=9211162
Long Beach, Calif., becomes a two-newspaper town
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/long-beach-calif-becomes-a-2-newspaper-town/2013/08/18/049394ec-0836-11e3-9941-6711ed662e71_story.html
Check the Cher video here
Of interest this weekend:
Six iPad Magazines That Are Changing The Publishing Business
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3016078/six-ipad-magazines-that-are-changing-the-publishing-business#6
Highlight:
Despite early hype, the tablet revolution has yet to resuscitate the magazine industry. But with these six apps, we’re starting to see progress in turning longform writing into immersive, digitally native content. Could this be the beginning of a glossy renaissance?
My take:
Glad to see that one of my favorite tablet magazines, Huffington, made the short list. Indeed, it reads well, looks inviting and allows enough interactivity.
As the author of this piece put it:
This app combines the design ethos of print with the interactivity and sharability of HuffPo’s native medium. The result is a liberal-leaning modern-day Newsweek that hooks into the web at every conceivable opportunity.
A modern-day Newsweek? Perhaps, without the longer-than-needed-to-be cover stories.
SND: Graphics Garage Workshop
My good friend, Jeff Goertzen, of the Orange County Register, is looking for volunteer speakers to participate in the Graphics Garage Workshop in Louisville, KY as part of the SND Annual Workshop and Exhibit program. This all-day workshop will be conducted Thursday, November 7.
“We are inviting the general public to attend this workshop for a fee of $75. And of course, our SND crowd is welcome to register as well,” Jeff tells me. “But we need your participation. We are looking for 7 volunteers to conduct either a lecture or a hands-on workshop,” says Jeff.
“With this Graphics Garage Workshop, I try to cover as many topics in visual communication and design as possible. Theory is good, but try to show some “how to” tips and step-by-step examples of what works and what doesn’t. Show the audience what to do and how to do it. The hands-on workshops can be product training or geared towards tips and tricks,” he said.
For more information, reach out directly to Jeff here:
jgoertzen@ocregister.com