By: Mark Fitzgerald Sunday, the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., celebrated 125 years of publishing with a special commemorative section. Monday, it launched its vision of the future, a redesigned paper that emphasizes local news and encourages readers to contribute their opinions.
"We are a much more heavily local newspaper, and we went up in newshole fairly significantly to achieve that," Argus Leader Executive Editor Randall Beck said. By Monday afternoon, the paper had received "a handful" of complaints about the reduction in space for national and international news, he said.
"These are largely older people, as you might guess, who don't get their national and international news on the Web," Beck said.
Among the innovations in the redesigned paper is a new section called "Voices." "It's sort of our in-print version of trying to create and be part of the community conversation," Beck said. "It's a hybrid mixture of opinion, forums, editorials, and local-local stuff, all sort of integrated with online. And I think it's pretty cool."
"Life," the newspaper's traditional features section, was converted from a broadsheet to a tabloid, and will feature rotating themes every day, such as health and fitness, entertainment and home and garden.
"It's like a magazine, themed around topics that we think resonate with readers and, to be honest, especially with women readers," Beck said.
Work on the redesign began about five and a half months ago, Beck said. Everything was created in-house, he added.
The Argus Leader has had eight consecutive years of circulation growth, Beck noted, but the paper has not been growing as fast as its market. "Strategically, what we've done is not so much look at our market and fret about our success, as look around the country, and knowing what is happening with the fundamental changes in American journalism," he said. "We know if something is happening in (Los Angeles) or Miami, it's not going to stay there. The feel here was, let's develop a strategy, and not wait until our readership is something we're embarrassed about or a circulation is declining."
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