We’re in Day Two of The Kansas City Star’s redesigned website and print edition, and I thought you might be interested in getting some “expert opinions” on the changes. So, yesterday and today I sent emails to several former Star staffers, seeking their observations.
Here’s what the former insiders had to say…I will add the opinions of others, if I receive any, and I would like to get your observations. So, comment away.
Kevin Murphy, Metro Desk:
Web: I am still a print guy, but I like the redesign of the website better than I do the remade newspaper itself. The Star banner at top gives the home web page a newspaper look, and I like that a lot of headlines show up on the screen immediately without having to scroll down.
Print: The section fronts look like shoppers in a way, with the italic headings — Sports Daily, Chow Town, etc. The type face of the copy is unnecessarily large, especially in classifieds and makes for a smaller news hole. It’s encouraging to read that the paper will stress investigative work plus breaking news and beat reporting. Do they have enough reporters to do that?
Gene Meyer, Business Desk
Karen Brown, Editorial Page
Print: They may have finally lost me as a diehard subscriber. More air (white space) and less news. Who needs or wants that? I lived through many “redesigns,” and not one of them contributed to increased circulation or readership. I know many people now get the majority of their news online — I’m one of them — but for people who still want something of a print version, this latest iteration of The Star is even farther away than the last one.
Mike Rice, Metro Desk
Web: I think they’re just polishing a turd. Sure, they’re going to put a great piece of journalism like Laura Bauer’s story (“Saving Govi”) on the first day, but what comes after a week or two? I hate the pay wall and the pop-up ads. And most of all how there is no indication from the headlines whether it is a local or national story. For instance, you see a headline that says “Man Bites Dog.” You think, hmmm, that’s interesting — where did this sick puppy commit this act? Olathe, Northland, my neighborhood. You click it, and once you maneuver the story around the pay wall, you find that this happened in Florida!
Print: I cancelled my subscription to The Star after they laid me off and never renewed. I buy the print edition on occasion and am both amazed and depressed by how small it is.
Julius Karash, Business Desk
Web: I think the site looks better and is more compelling, and the electronic version of the print edition (E-Star) is easier to navigate on my laptop now. The website’s search mechanism seems to be improved but still needs work. To test it, I requested a search for the oldest Dave Helling byline and was presented with an item, “GOP Site Selection Committee Arrives,” which the website says is “about 174 years old.”
Print: I am pleasantly surprised to see that there is still a business section. I like the additional subheads on news stories to help readers seeking quick summaries, but I question the value of publishing long, in-depth news features on weekdays. (Note: Julius stopped taking the print edition recently after experiencing delivery problems at his downtown residence.)
**
As Karen Brown noted, those of us who worked at The Star many years went through several redesigns, and it always took me at least a few weeks to get used to the changes.
Here are my initial, major observations of the redesign:
— The front page of the print edition contains just two stories a day, instead of three or four. Lame.
— The ridiculously small amount of national and international news in both the print edition and on the website is not changing. Embarrassing.
— The larger type face is good, especially for the older readers, who comprise the vast majority of print-edition readership. One thumb up.
Finally, here are the opinions of the two women I live with:
Patty: “It looks like a small-town newspaper.”
Brooks: “It looks like they’re turning it into a picture book…You can quote me.”
Ah, the kid knows the lingo. Warms my soul.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
New Star Design: All hat, no cattle; or lots of graphics and column headings, little news. What’s going on? John Wandless
Sounds like you agree with Brooks, John.
As Karen Brown noted, there’s more “air”….which from a business objective (the REAL operative lens in this situation) means there’s less news hole, so less need for a paid reporter, content developer, columnist, etc. to fill up the pages. For the moment, this allows the print edition to retain some bulk, so that the easily visible reduction in size is not as obvious. This design is about putting lipstick on the pig so that consumers don’t notice the reduction in pork.
Great analysis, Big Dog.
Hated it yesterday, and today I didn’t even get my paper!!! Everything about the redesign is awkward and childish looking. The least they could do is get delivery correct, which, for the past year or two has been nothing short of rotten. Love Brooks’ comment! Agree with Patty, and I know about small town papers, still get the weekly one from my hometown in SD!
Maybe one aspect of the redesign is that people in south Overland Park only get the paper every other day.
With the amount of “news” they’re reporting, maybe they should just go to a 4x per week paper!
Feels a bit like The Star is jumping the shark.
I have to admit I had never heard that phrase, mom…Daughter Brooks had to explain it to me. Funny!
You’d never heard of jumping the shark? Wow, Fitz, about time you caught up with 1980s catchphrases. Seriously, as a current staffer, I, too, felt the print version looked small town on day one but now like it. Makes a lot of sense, though I’m not a fan of the headline typeface. Sorry there’s not a lot of foreign or national news in it, but that’s a smart business decision. That sort of news can be gotten anywhere. What The Star still gives readers is unique local content. OK, we weren’t first on the Plaza, Gene, but we gave it more depth. But if fast is what you are after, we beat everyone on the Katy Trail story by a half hour that same day and did a better job telling it.
Laura’s story on the kid, readers latched onto that. And Karen Brown, love you still, but give us a break. White space aside, Thursday’s paper was loaded with news. Only retired people and the unemployed had time to read it all before lunch.
We are trying hard at 18th and Grand to keep this thing going. Instead of bashing the paper, former employees who contribute to this blog should celebrate its survival and are attempt to improve on it…We understand that some of you are bitter about being laid off. It could have been us. But what we don’t understand is the bitterness expressed by those who left voluntarily.
It’s a new day. Set aside you grievances and give us a chance to impress you.
Love your attitude, Hoss. I’ve said many times The Star still has the best and strongest news-gathering force in the region — a big region that includes St. Louis and Denver. I disagree with you on the national and international, though. For one thing, a lot of older readers rely on The Star for the vast majority of their news, and they are being short sheeted.
I remember when there was only one “disgruntled former Kansas City Star employee” (a term I take credit for introducing). That would have been Tom Leathers, who started The Town Squire in Johnson County…Now, yes indeed, there are a lot of disgruntled former Star employees, and I guess I’m in that group. What we don’t like is to have watched the paper spiral downward under shitty corporate ownership. Back in ’77, when Cap Cities bought us, I knew things would never be the same. For a while it was pretty good, but then…the trap door opened, swallowing not only a lot of jobs but the faith of many former employees that we would continue to see a top-notch, substantive paper for at least the rest of our lifetimes. There’s a lot of pride, for most of us, in being former employees, but the pride has been badly dented. And I think the appropriate description of our feelings — for most of us, again — is disappointment, not bitterness.
Unfortunately, we are witnessing the slow and painful demise of the Paris of the Plains “Grey Lady”!
By the way, I loved Jill Wendholt Silva’s package of barbecue stories on Wednesday, especially “Hog Heaven at Memphis in May.” I am from Memphis, and Jill’s well written analysis helped me reconcile my inner turmoil over the KC vs. Memphis Barbecue War. Yes, it is a new day indeed!
Certainly not a newspaper expert (had a cup of coffee at the Spokesman Review back in the 80s) but have been in IT/internet tech for some 25+ years, so I can say with some certainty the “new” web design sucks:
I had to reduce my browser’s default display size from 100% to 75% to get all the Star’s “selfies” on the front page to stop running off the page;
the layout is reminiscent of your average weekly circular; the perpetually busy ads are beyond annoying (really? you’re gonna make me see that NFM/Price Shopper ads EVERY TIME I click through? Buh Bye!);
and finally, the white space issue IS relevant – the NYT (as does the WaPo) uses a similar currently popular 1-page theme, but if you compare the two sites you’ll notice a couple of glaring differences: 1.) the NYT actually has tons of news to report (hence less white space), and 2.) there are very few adds on the NYT site, though the ads there are easily dismissed and far less annoying than on the Star’s site…almost as though a professional art director had made sure the site’s overall look and feel stayed consistent with that of a professional newspaper.
Have no idea what the physical paper looks like: dropped my subscription like a polonium filled potato back at the turn of the double oughts.
Agree. The “new” Star looks like a flyer from Trader Joe’s, but not as good.
Excellent contrast between the NYT and KC Star websites, Will. You can get just about every story you want or need on that rich home page.
…A personal benefit of The Star’s (and McClatchy’s) 180-degree turn to “local, local, local” (which, at heart, meant “cut, cut, cut”) is that after making The New York Times my go-to paper several years ago, I began following national and international news very closely. And that has broadened my perspective significantly.
…Great line on “polonium filled potato.”
Wow, a bunch of journalists writing honestly about what they saw in front of them without a lot of edtiorial oversight, what a concept.
I was just visiting friends and family in Indiana and saw a copy of the Kendallville, iN paper (Pop 9,894). Given that it seemed bigger than The Star (for those comparing The Star to a small town paper) I assumed it was a weekly, but no, it’s a daily.
I also found out that McClatchy owns Fort Wayne’s The News Sentinel. Fort Wayne also has the Journal Gazette (not McClatchy) The JG’s circulation is around 160,000 and the NS is around 13,000. (I got the figures from one of the NS’s folks, Fort Wayne Pop. 256496.) According to my guy there if the NS didn’t have a business relationship with the JG it would be dead.
As for The Star’s paywall, it’s non existent for anyone with even a basic knowledge of how their browser works. And why put up with all the pop ups when you can go to Fox 4, or any of the TV stations’ sites and get all you want without any popups? Had it not been for this blog I wouldn’t have known that The Star even changed.
John — I’m trying to “learn you” verification…That didn’t sound right about McClatchy owning The News-Sentinel, so I checked.
It was a Knight Ridder paper, but when McClatchy purchased the Knight Ridder papers in 2006, it announced before closing that it would sell 12 of the Knight Ridder papers, including The News-Sentinel. The buyer was Ogden Newspapers out of West Virginia, which continues to own the paper.
Also, I think its circulation is more in the 30,000 range.
I stand corrected. Thank you. The guy I was chatting with on the NS story was a part-time columnist and I incorrectly assumed he knew what he was talking about. The info on the Kendallville paper is more interesting from the standpoint that a paper in a community of less than 10,000 people is as big as The Star.
PS, the Kendallville paper goes for about $44 for three months, if memory serves, and just about everyone in town subscribes.
Agree with the thumbs down folks. They’re cutting way down on the colored ink which to me gives it that small town paper look. I counted fewer photos. The before and after copies of front page sports went from 6 to 4.
For what it’s worth, I’m just a 30+ year subscriber, the ex-employees might be bitter but the above critiques are dead on.
I am like several others who posted here. Over the past month, delivery of the print edition has become absolutely horrid. Today’s paper arrived at 9:02 A.M. ( I saw the carrier’s SUV outside the window when they threw the paper.) Yesterday was 8:30. One day it did not come until 9:30. Delivery between 8 and 9 am has become typical.
I’ve called the subscription number numerous times and waited on hold to talk to a real person. I’ve been told they made changes to the delivery system, have a team working on it, etc. etc. No apparent change to my delivery. Two weeks ago I told them I wanted the circulation manager to call me to address the problem. They promised they would call. Two weeks later no call.
After I mentioned several times that the NY Times promises delivery by 6:30, the last time I called they finally admitted the paper was to be delivered by 5:30. How they think what they are doing now matches that guideline I have no idea. They have lost of the rest of the print subscribers on my block and I guess they are hoping I’ll just cancel (I also have the NY Times delivered) so they no longer need to deliver in my area. I’m glad to know they are making so much money that they do not need subscribers.
On the redesign, I sure would like to know how much the news hole has been reduced by change in the print edition. I would not be surprised it is at least 20%.
The web site with all of the “extras” seems to periodically lock up my computer. As a person with an IT background, this smacks of poor design and the site not being optimize to make the best of the user experience. Because of that, I rarely visit the Star website anymore.
I’m prepaid to the Star through next June, but if I continue to get such poor service, I’ll be canceling both the print and web.
Bill, I suggest you call (816) 234-4141 and follow the prompts to dial by last name. The guy you want is Ken Batrick (with a “B”), v.p. of “audience,” i.e., circulation. He might not pick up but leave a message asking him to call you. Having a specific name sometimes helps. I had good success reaching the previous circulation v.p., Chris Christian.
Jim, Thank you. I have left a voice mail for him.
Please let me and the readers know what you hear. Good test case on responsiveness.
I did receive a call this morning. I was assured I will receive a follow-up call after they talk to the carrier.
“In this business, you learn to get along with all types.” Bill Vaughn
A Starbeam to savor…
I disliked the print redesign from Day One, and doubt that it will grow on me. This multi-font mess resembles a high school paper from the 1980s, when we were all figuring out PageMaker and didn’t know ‘ragged right’ from Raggedy Ann. A redesign should make a paper easier to read, not the other way around.
Looking to the positive side: The larger print does make up for less content/advertising within.
I find the larger print is much easier for me to read…Seems like they’ve decided, for now, to let out the reins a bit on the columnists. Some of those pieces are pretty, pretty long.
Wonderful, let’s give even more space to that portion of the paper half the readership hates and provide even less solid news gathering. Just great, that should solve the problem.
I didn’t know there was a redesign until I read this post. That’s how disconnected from the Star I’ve become. So…I checked the web page and it looks OK to me, different but not better, or worse. I didn’t read any of the stories. For such an important news source, I couldn’t find anything of interest.
It was nice to have national and international news, but I agree the paper will sell best if it really digs into its niche, which is local news. (I now get my national and international news from The Wall Street Journal and occasionally the New York Times.) But I suspect there are now too few reporters to cover the local scene in a thorough manner so the paper may be abdicating its local news niche.
I feel sorry for the current employees. I’m sure they are all trying to put out a quality product.
I just sent the following to new@kcstar.com:
I’m still getting used to it and have no strong feelings pro or con — EXCEPT for the changes that result in a terrible waste of space, and diminished news hole, such as:
1/ All that white space is way overdone. I’m okay with the ragged right, but all that space above and below heads and stories is a waste. You can achieve a more open and lighter look with moderate, not over the top, white space. Just curious…how much news hole is lost with the new format vs. the old?
2/ People who like circles will like the new columnist photos. Circle, rectangle, square, triangle, trapezoid — I don’t particularly care, as long as they’re small. Which is why I HATE those large cut outs. Awful waste of space to see the same boring pictures over and over and over.
3/ I also hate the apparent decision that requires huge photos on section fronts. As some of you may recall, before becoming a cranky letter writer I spent a few years in the photojournalist trade. I’ve noticed that many make-over gurus, page designers and editors think that big photos create impact. That’s absolutely true of good photos, but not mediocre ones.
If a photo doesn’t elicit any emotion from the viewer to start with, there is no emotion to heighten by running it huge. If a photo is good, it deserves to run big. If not, don’t waste the space.
Case in point…this Sunday’s huge front page mug shot of Brownback. A totally mediocre, unexceptional shot of Brownback takes up 2/3 of the front page. Absolutely no way to justify that, except by some design calling for big, bold graphics out front to create “impact”. I assure you, the only impact a big blah photo like that creates is anger and irritability in anyone who values news space and content.
4/ Did your redesign guru promise you that the devastating drop in classifieds would be reversed by larger type? Did all those businesses that fled classifieds tell you “Yes, absolutely, if only that type were larger we’d rush back faster than you can say internet.”
I’m totally baffled and would love to hear an explanation.
5/ Speaking of type size, Fannin writes that the body type is larger. Maybe it is in the copies that someone drops off in his office or at his home, but it’s not in the ones the rest of us get. Except for a few design choices that result in larger type blocks here and there, the rest of the paper looks exactly the same as before.
6/ I see you’re running fewer letters to the editor and you’ve probably put a limit of 150 words on them, down from 200. I say “probably” because it says 150 in the paper, but remains 200 on line, so I’m not sure. Most letters don’t require all those 200 words, but some do. If you saved just a tiny fraction of the wasted space detailed above, you could easily keep the 200 limit as well as the space currently devoted to letters.
Best, Talis Bergmanis
Fairway, Kansas
Readers have never liked a redesign, even when newspapers were fat and happy. Much of the appeal of a daily newspaper is that it is familiar and comfortable and routine. An overhaul like this shakes things up with no clear benefit (except the message from the newspaper editors asserting how much better it is for you).
For the reader’s sake, if there are tangible benefits to changing the design, it would make more sense to introduce changes in gradual steps and ease into it. A radical redesign gets some attention, but it seems it’s always negative.
In the current atmosphere that surrounds the Star, the redesign seems panicky and desperate. Do they think it lure advertisers because it’s something new and different? Does anybody think that will work?
For me, I don’t mind the new look of the print edition–but I also can’t point to anything about which I can say “this is demonstrably better than it was before and I understand what the purpose of the change is.” So it’s just bells and whistles that don’t address the fundamental problem: the deteriorating quality of the content brought about by the shrinking staff and newshole.
Here’s an interesting piece that seems relevant to the discussion.
http://www.kcconfidential.com/2015/10/05/hearne-karen-dillon-usa-today-transform-lawrence-journal-world/#more-27256
Thanks, Fitz, for defending us former staffers by saying our feeling is disappointment, not bitterness. As a 30-year veteran of The Star, I don’t think I could ever feel bitter about the paper — it’s too much a part of me. When I’d go in there at night to work on something when the newsroom was quieter, I always felt a rush of pride as I went up those magnificent front steps and into the building.
I want The Star to be a strong, outstanding newspaper always, a worthy descendant of its glory days. I know it faces a daunting task and I have nothing but admiration for the folks who still work so hard to put out the best product possible.
Because I know the financial resources are limited, I hate to see the company spending money on something that I believe will have little return. I’d rather see that money — and space — spent on keeping good reporters and giving them the time and encouragement to dig deep into important stories that no other local source will have. That’s the basis for my criticism.
Heartfelt commentary, Karen. Thank you!
I’d say we’re at least two or three days past prime on this. Can we PLEASE move on now?!