By: Mark Fitzgerald Tribune Co.'s Spanish-language daily, Hoy, will have a new look when it converts to free distribution in Chicago and Los Angeles.
"The biggest change is typographic," Publisher Digby Solomon Diez said in an interview today. "I didn't like the body type in the paper, and I didn't like the headline type. ... I felt the paper was too gray."
Hoy published a full-page article on the redesign in its Friday edition, showing prototype pages with bolder, sans serif typeface for headlines mixed with a serif typeface the paper has favored in recent years.
Solomon said the front page had also been redesigned to eliminate "goal post" look with a large photo bracketed by page-long columns of teases, weather and, often, a short news item. The new front page will have many more and varied graphics.
"The main intent is to take better advantage of the tabloid format, to make it livelier, make it more interesting and entertaining," he said. "It will be much more like a traditional tabloid, or not even a traditional tabloid, but more like Latin American tabloids like Peru 21 or the tabloids in Spain."
Tribune announced last month that it would convert Hoy's Chicago and Los Angeles editions from paid single-copy sales to "controlled circulation." The announcement followed exposure of a circulation fraud scandal that resulted in an unusual censure from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), which in December determined that Hoy had overstated its circulation by 46%. The New York/New Jersey edition, where the circulation fraud occurred under the paper's former editor and publisher, Louis Sito, will remain a paid product, Tribune said. The cover price for Hoy is 25 cents.
Page two will be devoted to what the paper calls "useful information," short items about mass-transit changes, lottery results, the horoscope, and a "this day in history" feature.
Hoy said its sports section would present "more information with an easier and faster presentation" about the sports "that most interest us," which it listed as football, baseball, boxing, and other unspecified games.
The separate pages devoted, in the Chicago edition, to news from Mexico, South America, Central America and Puerto Rico will be replaced by what the paper called "a big news block" entitled simply "Latinoamerica." Solomon said the paper is working on how to tailor news to the different mix of Hispanics in each market. "We really want to emphasize more Mexico in Chicago and L.A., and play up more [news from] El Salvador in L.A., whereas in New York, where there's more varied background, we want to emphasize the Caribbean."
"It's a little more production-intensive," he added, "but that's fine."
Hoy's Chicago and L.A. editions will be delivered free to homes in ZIP codes with heavy Hispanic populations, and will also be distributed through vending boxes, stores, restaurants and other locations where people spend time reading the newspaper.
In Chicago, where the paper was launched in September 2003, Hoy has sold about 25,000 copies daily, Tribune has said. With free distribution the press run will be increased from 35,000 to 45,000 copies Monday through Thursday, and more than 60,000 on Fridays, when the paper will sample more heavily. In Chicago, where Hoy was launched last March, sales and sampling have accounted for about 75,000 copies distributed each day. Monday through Friday distribution will stay at about that level, and the Friday press run, now 126,000 copies, will be increased to 150,000.
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