Tag Archives: Redesigns
Biz journal changes name, launches tablet version
by Chris Roush
James MacGregor, publisher of the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal, writes that the American City Business Journals‘ paper is changing its name to just Silicon Valley Business Journal and launching a tablet edition, among other changes.
MacGregor writes, “Plus, we’ve revamped our web site and email products to give them a fresher look. Finally, when you get our paper tomorrow, you’ll observe a total redesign.
“So why did we do it? Why did we go on the attack and spend the money when other publishers are playing defense? Because any businessperson will tell you that the best time to reinvest is when your business is healthy and profitable, and the Business Journal is just that. How healthy? Let me share some quick facts with you:
• The Business Journal last year increased paid print circulation again in 2012.
• The number of people reading our email newsletters rose about 10 percent in 2012.
• We are setting traffic records on our Web site, SiliconValleyBusinessJournal.com.
• Our event business is thriving and last year’s 54 events connected area business decision makers with the buyers and influencers that they needed to meet.
“With the support of our parent company, American City Business Journals, we looked at our business as if we were starting it from scratch.”
Read more here.
Toronto paper makes two parts of biz section exclusive to subscribers
by Chris Roush
The Globe and Mail in Toronto is making two areas of its business section available exclusively online to subscribers.
A story on its website states, “ROB Insight is a new section that contains sharp analysis and opinion on the biggest business stories of the day. It’s where you can find commentaries from some of the brightest minds in Canadian business journalism, including David Parkinson, Eric Reguly, Sean Silcoff and Scott Barlow, a former Bay Street strategist.
“You’ll also find a selection of items from the Financial Times’s Lex column and Reuters BreakingViews.
“Streetwise is where you’ll find breaking news and analysis on deals and finance in Canada’s capital markets. The Streetwise blog has expanded its coverage with our outstanding team of financial reporters and columnists, led by Boyd Erman.
“Both Streetwise and ROB Insight are updated several times a day. To find out more, watch this video by Report on Business editor Derek DeCloet.”
Read more here.
New biz writer, Sunday biz page in Topeka
by Chris Roush
The Topeka Capital-Journal in Kansas has hired Megan Hart to cover business and has started a Sunday business news page.
Hart writes, “Starting this Sunday, there will be a business page to be your guide to commercial, financial and employment news in the Topeka community. Each week we’ll bring you an in-depth look at an issue affecting the business community, as well as news of stores opening, closing and relocating.
“As the new business writer, I’ll do my utmost to stay on top of the community. I can’t be everywhere, though, so I’m asking for your help in keeping up with the news. Know of a new business, or one closing its doors? Heard about a new product or service that everyone’s going to want to hear about?”
Read more here.
Tomari Quinn, the editor of the paper, tells Talking Biz News in an email that, “When the economy began its downturn a few years ago, we had to tighten our belts in the newsroom. That meant we, unfortunately, lost a good deal of the business coverage in The Capital-Journal. We’ve been able to dedicate more resources to our reporting corps in the past year, and increasing our business coverage was a high priority for us. Megan Hart will lead that effort for us.”
Idaho Statesman cuts standalone biz section
by Chris Roush
The Idaho Statesman is cutting its standalone business section and moving the publishing date of its weekly magazine Business Insider.
Editor Karla Gower writes, “We also took this time to review our daily Business section. We’ve gone back and forth on having a separate section during the recent economic downturn. At one point, we put the content into the Sports section. We didn’t really like that, though, and worked out a way to bring it back as a separate section.
“But we had to print the Business section earlier in the day, and that hasn’t worked well for us — or you. Some of the best business stories arrive after the deadline. Our stocks content barely arrives in time. And it was a real crunch for our presentation folks to edit and design it — and still stay long enough to do the later press run for the other sections.
“So we are going to put our business news into our main news section starting Tuesday. You’ll find it between local/Idaho news and nation/world news. You’ll see your favorite content that you identified in our recent survey: the top business story and the headlines. We’ll still have a half-page of stocks, including local ones and others selected by our readers.
“Because of constraints on the size of sections on our presses, we will move the personal finance information we had on Saturday to the Monday Life section. That includes the popular Dave Ramsey column and the Better Business Bureau scam alerts. Two other popular features, Ed Lotterman’s economics column and Marie McIntyre’s workplace coach column, will move to Business Insider. Our legal ads will move next to our classified ads.”
Marketwatch.com launches section on retirement
by Chris Roush
Marketwatch.com, the business and financial news site operated by Dow Jones & Co., announced Wednesday the launch of MarketWatch Retirement.
Featuring news, advice and analysis targeted toward people saving for retirement, those who should be, and those already retired, the section brings together the expertise of MarketWatch’s retirement reporters and columnists, as well as coverage from The Wall Street Journal and SmartMoney.com, two other business news properties that are part of Dow Jones.
“Each day for the next two decades, people will be stepping into a retirement altogether different from that of their parents’ generations,” said Jonathan Krim, acting editor of MarketWatch, which generates nearly 15 million unique visitors per month, in a statement. “The depth of this new section makes it an indispensible resource for people to make smart, thoughtful steps to maximize their resources for the future.”
The new section includes columns from journalists, including Robert Powell’s ‘Retirement Portfolio’ and Andrea Coombes’ ‘Working Retirement;’ an expanded Encore blog, highlighting news and information for retirement savers and retirees; columns from RetireMentors, financial professionals with perspectives on best ways to navigate retirement; and how-to guides on investing, health-care, managing 401(k)s and credit.
Seeking Alpha launches redesigned mobile site
by Chris Roush
Seeking Alpha, which tracks investing and the markets, has a redesigned mobile web site.
An item on its website states, “We think you’ll like our redesigned article pages, which emphasize ease of reading for mobile users. Font sizes can be customized for readers who like larger or smaller text.
“To try our redesigned mobile website, just pull up Seeking Alpha on any mobile device, log in using your standard SA username and password, and your portfolio will be synced. From this point on, whenever you access mobile Seeking Alpha you’ll receive live intraday data, news, and opinion on the stocks you follow. In addition to syncing your existing SA portfolio on the mobile site, you are also able to add stocks to your portfolios as well as create new portfolios.
“When you first arrive on our new mobile interface, you will arrive on our Top News and Analysis page. From here you may access the rest of the mobile site by tapping on the menu icon in the top left corner of the page. Once the menu slides open you may use the menu to navigate to the different SA dashboards you are already familiar with.”
Read more here.
The metamorphosis of American City Business Journals
by Chris Roush
The 40 business newspapers operated by American City Business Journals across the country will be undergoing some changes in the next few months that will place more emphasis on delivering news digitally.
The changes are beginning to roll out in the newsrooms now and include new job descriptions, redesigned print newspapers and newsroom structure changes.
Unlike its parent company, Advance Publications, which has been shutting daily newspaper operations in New Orleans, Birmingham and other markets to emphasis online delivery, Charlotte-based American City says it has no plans to de-emphasize its printed newspapers. And the moves will not result in any elimination of jobs, executives stressed.
“Print is still a huge component of our business,” said Whit Shaw, CEO of American City, in a phone interview with Talking Biz News on Friday. “Our approach to print will change over time. But I don’t think our commitment to it will change in this process.”
Shaw said a half to two-thirds of the company’s newspapers will report flat to positive circulation growth in 2012, while a quarter of them will report a slight decline. Local advertising revenue is expected to rise in 2012.
The new job descriptions and newsroom structures are currently being implemented across the company, which operates weekly business newspapers from Boston to Honolulu. For example, a newsroom employee will now be responsible for social media at each of its papers. Although most of the ACBJ papers post breaking news on their websites daily, there will be more online news each day.
The redesigns are expected to launch in the first quarter or 2012. ACBJ is working with noted newspaper designer Mario Garcia on a prototype that will use larger photos and different story formats.
The changes are designed to recognize that the company needs to provide quality content both online and in its print publications, said Emory Thomas, the chief content officer at ACBJ and the former editor and publisher of its Seattle paper.
“We need a stronger and fresher look at digital and moving to a place where great digital feeds great print,” said Thomas in the phone interview. “This is really about upgrading the quality of all our platforms.”
Shaw emphasized that the changes would not be identical for every newspaper. “We have the rough blueprint, but the construction drawings are going to change from market to market,” said Shaw.
ACBJ journalists will now also be expected to use more social media such as Twitter and Facebook as part of their jobs.
“The core of what we see is our reporters owning their audiences on more platforms than ever before,” said Thomas. “If you’re a commercial real estate reporter in Minneapolis, you need to be on social media and having a conversation about the news that you’re breaking, and you need to be providing perspective about that news in the weekly newspaper. The way we structure our newsrooms and the way we configure our products needs to acknowledge that.”
The company is privately held and is part of the Newhouse media conglomerate that includes Conde Nast and newspapers across the country.
Biz editors adjust to market closures due to Sandy
by Chris Roush
As Hurricane Sandy wreaks havoc along the Atlantic coast, forcing markets in New York to close on Monday and Tuesday, business editors around the country are adjusting their coverage and sections.
The market closure means that daily newspapers that typically run stock agate on a daily basis now have to find other content to fill that space.
Adam Goodman, the deputy managing editor of local and business news at the S. Louis Post-Dispatch, tells Talking Biz News that the half page reserved for markets coverage and stock agate is going to the national desk for hurricane coverage.
“Most of that space is where our market agate would have run,” said Goodman. “This is easy for us to do since our business pages run inside the A section on those days anyway. We are using the remaining portion of our space for our local business stories and wire.”
Jim Wright, the business editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said that the market closing doesn’t affect his plans that much.
“We don’t do much personal finance coverage, so a market closure doesn’t do much to us,” said Wright. “We’ll put local and wire copy in the 3/4-page space where the stock table normally runs on Tuesday, and likely give up a little space on Wednesday.”
Michael Lev, the associate managing editor for business at the Chicago Tribune, says the paper didn’t make many adjustments.
“We’ve got more than a full page of coverage of Sandy for Tuesday’s paper, but we didn’t need to make any adjustments to deal with the market closure because we print only a half-page of markets highlights each day,” said Lev. ”It’s not like the old days of publishing three or four full pages of markets info.”
Chris Dinsmore, the business editor of the Baltimore Sun, says his staff is busy focusing on covering the business aspects of the storm.
“My staff is focused on covering the business aspects of the storm’s impact and the ongoing saga of power outages,” he said. “In our Tuesday section, we’re running a story on the market’s unusual closing and plugged the ½-page market hole with wire. We’ll plug again tomorrow.”
The business editors in Charlotte and Miami also focused their coverage on local angles.
“Because Miami is a tourism and transportation hub, we’re watching the impacts of the storm and its aftermath on airlines and cruise lines,” said Jane Wooldridge, the business editor at the Miami Herald. “The regions are closely aligned, so we’re keeping a tight watch on what is happening there. Because we do still run stock results in print daily — we have a substantially large market that does not go online — we have devoted the space we would normally give to stocks in our B section to storm coverage, redeploying that space to our A / national pages.”
Added John Arwood, the business editor of the Charlotte Observer: “We assigned three business reporters to write about the effects of the storm on Carolinas businesses, from US Airways, to Lowe’s to Duke Energy. For our print edition, the closing of the markets — and the absence of stock listings today — gave us a bit of extra news hole on the main Business page. That allowed us to give plenty of good display space to our package on the storm’s business effects. That package included the Carolinas impact story, a main story from the business wires, and two boxes. Normally the stock listings would take up a strip across the bottom of the page about 2.5 inches deep. We were glad to have that space back today.”
Gordon Oliver, the business editor of the Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., tells Talking Biz News that his staff is looking for that local angle as well.
“We are expecting earnings from a local bank tomorrow,” he said. “I called to see if they will still file earnings even if the market is closed and haven’t heard back. That will of course affect our coverage. AP has given us a menu of choices to partially replace the markets page. We haven’t decided whether to pull something together or land a full-page add that needs to go somewhere before the end of November. We also are checking to see if local companies have any role in disaster response, but haven’t come up with one yet. I’m writing a Sunday column about the local utility’s preparedness for a big storm, and how that’s changed in the 50 years since this region’s biggest and most infamous windstorm.”
Jill Jorden Spitz, SABEW’s president and assistant managing editor of business at the Arizona Daily Star, said her business section dropped to one page from its normal two pages because of the storm.
Michigan business journal launches updated website
by Chris Roush
The Grand Rapids Business Journal in Michigan has relaunched its website.
John Zwarensteyn, the publisher, writes, “It is now up and delivering timely and pertinent business news with all of our trusted accuracy and analysis. I am proud of our new capabilities to produce original content and real-time news, updated throughout the day.
“This addition continues our tradition and long-standing commitment to provide the Grand Rapids-West Michigan business community with the best in local business news reporting. Now, you will have access to that news on a variety of different platforms, produced by an expanded staff of experienced journalists you have come to know and trust.
“The online content and reporting goes beyond what our print edition has to offer, so make sure you check in with us every day to keep up with West Michigan’s ever-evolving and dynamic business community.
“Our readers will be able to comment on, discuss and share stories using this new and robust online platform.We will be mobile-friendly and add more mobile apps and special content.
“We also will carry blogs by local business leaders and industry experts, and we will deliver our stories with timely emails and alerts, all of which can be managed by you, the reader. Other features include searchable article archives spanning more than a decade, and premium online access for Business Journal subscribers.”
Read more here.
Welcome to the new Orange County Register biz section
by Chris Roush
Here is the house ad (click on it to see a larger version) that the Orange County Register is running to promote its new standalone business section:
