Wisconsin Paper Launches Redesign With 'Sharper Edge'

By: E&P Staff The Wisconsin State Journal published a redesigned and narrower newspaper Monday with a themed features section intended to attract younger readers, and a front page setting for stories its editor says will be more "muscular" and have "sharper edges" to its enterprise reporting.

Ellen Foley, editor of the 87,000-circulation Madison daily, said "amazingly," the reaction to the extensive redesign was generally positive. The biggest complaint revolves around the need, because of the narrower web width, to shave space from the syndicated Cryptoquote puzzle. Readers said there's not enough space to write the decoded letters, she said.

"So it goes to show you: we journalists work so very hard on the dense work of reporting and watchdog writing and all that other fun stuff -- and it's the Cryptoquote you get all the phone calls on," Foley said with a laugh.

The narrower 48-inch web width was necessitated by the Chicago Tribune's decision to narrow its pages. The State Journal prints Tribune copies distributed in Wisconsin.

For the first time, the State Journal's feature section, formerly called Daybreak, will be themed according to the day of the week. Monday's editions kicked off a technology-oriented section called Tech Smart. That will be followed by Solutions, which Foley described in a column as " simple living;" Taste on cooking and eating; Work Smart, involving career and financial advice; Go See Do, a Friday entertainment guide; and Sunday living.

Saturday's feature section is called "!" The paper refers to it as "bang," Foley said.

"Our concern was that we needed to focus better, and we wanted to reach out to younger readers," Foley said in an interview. "Now, our younger readers are not 18, they're 35. But as a former editor of The Philadelphia Daily News, we know publications can reach those readers, but you have to give them content they want to see."

On Friday's, the State Journal is extending its "Readers Choice" concept from the front page to the feature section. For several years, the paper's Web site has polled readers on what stories to feature on its front page. Now, it is inviting readers to share ideas for weekend activities.

"This is a version of social networking, although it's in a different technology -- it's in print," she said. "We want (readers) to tell us their secret places in Madison."

For the front page, Foley said she is looking for stories that are a mix of breaking news, enterprises pieces, and watchdog journalism. "We have tended to be a little more enterprise-oriented in tone," she said. "I'm trying to get sharper edges on stories. A little more muscular feel. More vitality."

A multiple car crash in the fog on a local stretch of interstate highway that killed two and injured several others provided that kind of story for the first day of the redesign, Foley said.