Start The Presses:

I want to thank everyone for coming to our open house Thursday. The turnout was better than we expected — thankfully we had enough food and drinks. I’m grateful so many showed up to take a sneak peek at our redesign, and happy to say our new look was well received.

Of course, the proof will be in the actual paper, not mock-ups. Our redesign launches Tuesday, and I want to go through a number of the changes you’ll see, why we made those changes, and what each means for your reading experience.

Skyboxes

The most notable change, in my opinion, is the addition of a skybox. The skybox — the box above the masthead — is designed to promote stories, columns and other features inside the paper. This allows us to place more information on the front page — and allows you to know at a glance where to find that information.

Better integration with the online version

During my time at the News-Press, I have worked to improve not only the print edition, but increase the importance and velocity of our online presence. The redesign features additional graphic elements that let readers know about online video and photo galleries. In addition, we will be publishing online comments in the paper, giving readers a larger voice.

New masthead design and headline font

We’ve updated the paper’s masthead and logo, a change I feel makes the paper stand out both on the news rack and the breakfast table. Per your overwhelming requests, we’ve kept the name “Glendale” in the title of the paper.

The body text of the paper remains the same, but we’ve changed the headline font to a more slender and modern font called “Antenna.”

Columns

For many years, columnists ran on the front page of the News-Press. Starting Tuesday, you will find them on the Forum page. Most newspapers place their columnists inside the paper, not on the front page. This change puts us in line with standard journalism practices.

Though the News-Press can be found within the Los Angeles Times, it is a separate paper, and I wanted to make sure this paper has an identity separate from The Times. Putting columnists on the Forum page is one simple — but important — way of doing this.

Index