National Post Graphics Editor in Afghanistan

Richard Johnson, Graphics Editor of the National Post is in Afghanistan! He is illustrating and writing stories of lives caught up in the conflict in Kandahar province. Richard is filing almost daily to his blog, Kandahar Journal, at nationalpost.com, where you will find audio clips of his experiences, illustrations, and commentary on his travels.

He has just spent several days on two patrols with Canadian soldiers from Afghanistan's Forward Operating Base Ma'Sum Ghar. One was a tense patrol searching a village for booby traps, the other collecting dead bodies after a Taliban attack. National Post devoted page A3 to Richard's coverage.

From top, counter clockwise, Corporal Jason Sypher is among the Canadians who respond to a report of an attack on an Afghan police check-point. The soldiers walk behind the tanks toward the checkpoint, where they find the bodies of Afghans inside. Their police collegues are somber. Earlier, Master Corporal Darryl McCann was on village patrol. The soldiers met a man and his children, the smallest appears sickly.

Richard has illustrated war before! When he was at the Detroit Free Press, he went to Iraq with fellow journalist, Jeff Seidel and they produced Portraits of War. Their stories were eventually published into a book.

Through the stories and sketches, he is reminding readers that individuals make up the casualty counts in the news stories they read. He is giving them faces and stories.

Last week Richard's art became main art on A1. He drew two members of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, Trooper Steve Davidson and Corporal Wade Wick mourning the death of their friend, Trooper Darryl Caswell, who died in an explosion a few days before.

Toronto Star befores and afters

Our friend stateside at newsdesigner.com posted no fewer than 13 before-and-after page pairs of the redesigned Toronto Star. (Including couple of links back north to SND's Canada Blog for earlier coverage.) Not much new reported here, but newsdesigner provides a great platform to compare and contrast the new with the old.

QuarkXpress on OSX

The Journal de Montreal has officially switched over to QuarkXpress and CopyDesk on OSX (finally moved on from OS9). Having worked in newsrooms where only the graphics department had Macs, this is a long-overdue and much-appreciated upgrade. What's the trend in other newsrooms?

Design | The 2012 London Olympics

The London Olympic committee has unveiled its new logo - a jagged pink and yellow thingy based on the date 2012. (It comes in a few other colours as well.)

"This is the vision at the very heart of our brand," said London 2012 organising committee chairman Seb Coe.

"It will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world.

"It is an invitation to take part and be involved.

"We will host a Games where everyone is invited to join in because they are inspired by the Games to either take part in the many sports, cultural, educational and community events leading up to 2012 or they will be inspired to achieve personal goals."

That's a tall order for a little logo.

The Globe's online push

The Globe and Mail has been very active with changes on the online front. Back on April 28 when it launched its print redesign, the national newspaper also unveiled a redesigned and restructured business web hub - reportonbusiness.com - which premiered a new look for globeandmail.com.

In Monday's paper (June 4), the Globe took the unusual step of carrying a glossy insert promoting "Canada's new financial supersite."

reportonbusiness.com takes the Globe's online business coverage, globeinvestor.com pages, advanced investment tools and mutual fund data and analysis into one enhanced site.

The Globe has since flipped its home page into the new design. It also gave birth to a new GlobeLife hub in the new look back on the April 28 launch day.

Here are the highlights of the new design:

• Elimination of vertical navigation column in order to create more above-the-fold space on the page for editorial content.


• New design allows editors to switch the layout of any page on the fly to reflect the news of the day -- there are a collection of routine news and major news options.


• Built and launched a new video player to make video content an integral portion of the site. This can be seen in both the "multimedia centre" on the Home page and in the redesigned story pages that allow video to truly stand out.


• Redesigned article page to enhance readability and to allow content related to the article -- such as video -- to stand out without in any way impeding the reader experience. Article page now also allows for in-line stock quotes.


• Subtle adoption of the design element of the print edition -- the new maple leaf, new font on page labels, etc.


• Use of a more subtle palette on the hub pages to reduce clutter and visual noise.
  
• Fewer images on hub pages, but images used more selectively and creatively.


• Ad placement has been tweaked to maximize ad effectiveness without in any way detracting from the effectiveness of the editorial.

Here's a link to globeandmail.com editor Angus Frame's online chat about the new look on May 23.

On Friday, June 1, the Globe flipped six more content hubs into the new design: Technology, AtPlay, Personal Tech, TQ@Work, Science and Opinions

The experts weigh in

d

UPDATED Although there have not been too many comments here about the new Toronto Star, the paper itself published a column Friday discussing the merits of its own redesign. Antonia Zerbisias, in her Star.com media column, asked three industry 'experts' what they thought of the redesign.

Lucie Lacava, a Montreal-based design consultant and former SND presedent who authored the previous Star design, said it was not a "dramatic" remake, more of a stripped-down version of what she designed. Lacava questions why The Star dumped its "distinctive blue nameplate," which has left the paper "less distinctive, more generic. Perhaps `generic' is too harsh. It's been simplified a lot."

Sunni Boot, president of ad buyer ZenithOptimedia: "I love it. I really, really like it. It's very well designed, very easy to navigate."

Tony Sutton, president of News Design Associates: the new Star is "very, very readable." He told Zerbisias "my problem with it is, as always, and as one of your readers pointed out (in a letter), it looks like it's got less news in it."

Here's the link to the Zerbisias column.

And perhaps the before and after comparison above might encourage some further responses (pdf's can be viewed below). starsample-before.pdf starsample-after.pdf

CNA GREAT IDEA WINNERS

First: Winnipeg Free Press:

EXPLANATION OF IDEA
Basically, we wanted to write something in serial form that our readers would want to read every day, to boost circulation. We were looking for a story that would grip the largest number of readers. It had to be local, it had to have a mass appeal, and it had to be a bit of a mystery, to keep people hooked. When we learned about a local academic’s bizarre research into the occult past of our province’s greatest landmark, the legislature and its Golden Boy, we knew we had the story we were looking for.

IMPLEMENTATION OF IDEA
We put feature writer Carolin Vesely and veteran editor and author Buzz Currie on the story, and worked on the story and its presentation for four months, along with a crew of photographers. We decided to use a tongue-in-cheek homage to The Da Vinci Code, and the first chapter was written Dan Brown-style. We kicked it off on a Saturday, our biggest newspaper, and ended it on a Saturday two weeks later. We launched with a radio and TV advertising campaign, and tied it in with an online contest with daily clues in-paper.

RESULTS
The Hermetic Code was a huge success. "Where can I get this book?"" calls began flooding in by the third day. Bookstores across the province were also calling, saying they were fielding calls for "the book" in-store. By mid-series, we had decided to publish The Hermetic Code in hard cover. Online, the website contest garnered an unprecedented 16,000 hits (regular contests might get 1,000). Many of our subscribers called or wrote to say it was the best thing we’d had in the paper in years.

The Hermetic Code book has been published is currently on the Manitoba Best Seller list and close to becoming a Canadian Best Seller.

Photo from left: Buzz Currie, co-author, Frank Albo, researcher, Carolin Vesely, co-author and Gordon Preece, art director.

Second: Calgary Herald
"Our Future" The Herald created a beautiful six-part magazine series on Alberta's future. Paper formed terms, worked on project over six-month period, final magazine turned over to students for art and essay competition. Results: Circulation increase of 13.15%, $240,000 in new revenue, and new readers reached.

Third: Vancouver Province:
A fictional mystery serial that ran for 12 weeks. A noted mystery writer wrote the first (and last chapters) and readers were invited to produce chapters 2-11. Remarkable reader reaction as more than 1,300 submissions were received. The Province published the best of the readers' works in a booklet.

Honourable Mention: The Winnipeg Free Press
"Front Page Revolution". The newspaper removed stories from front page, went with a visual menu, designed with website use in mind. Numerous stories are promoted on front page, heavy use of photos, flexible layout design, paper changed inside, driven by front-page design. Results: Readers positive, many prefer to get overview before opening paper, single copy sales have risen by 8%.

Quebecor snaps up Osprey chain

Quebecor Inc. will acquire Osprey Media Income Fund, a newspaper chain with several of Canada's oldest titles, in a $517-million deal.

Based in Markham, Ont., the company operates 54 newspapers, including the St. Catharines Standard, Peterborough Examiner and the Kingston Whig-Standard.
Quebecor owns papers across Canada, including Le Journal in Montreal and Quebec, and the Sun tabloid chain in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg. It also owns the 24 Hours chain of freebies in several cities.

"We believe that the addition of the assets of Osprey to our existing portfolio in the print media sector will make our organization better equipped to meet the challenges facing our industry. With the combination of Sun Media and Osprey, Quebecor Media consolidates its role as a leader in the industry", said Pierre Karl Peladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor Media.

"The offer of Quebecor Media reflects strong value for unitholders while providing an excellent strategic fit for our newspapers," said Osprey CEO Michael Sifton, great-grandson of Sir Clifford Sifton, a federal cabinet minister who bought the Winnipeg Free Press in the 1890s.

CanWest sells off stake in Metro freebies in Vancouver, Ottawa

CanWest Global Communications Corp. is selling off its stake in Metro's Vancouver and Ottawa freebies.

The Winnipeg-based media company is choosing instead to focus on its paid newspapers in those cities and its own freebie, Rush Hour, which launched in Ottawa recently.
Torstar Corp. and Metro International SA are acquiring CanWest's one-third stake.
The two companies are already equal partners on three other Metro newspapers in Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto. The purchase will give each a half stake in the Vancouver and Ottawa publications.

Metro International is based in Sweden and publishes the free newspapers in more than 100 cities by partnering with publishers around the world. The company arrived in Canada in 2000, starting in Toronto, and has been battling Quebecor Inc.'s free newspaper brand 24 Hours fiercely in several of the country's biggest cities.

"With a consistent ownership structure now in place in all five English Metro markets, the Metro newspapers will be managed with a single-minded focus on the development and growth of the Metro brand across English Canada," says Jagoda Pike, president Star Media Group and chair of the board of directors of the English Canada Metro newspapers.