The Post-Dispatch of St. Louis, Mo., has something new for readers these days: A special evening edition called P-D P.M.
It’s viewable on tablet, smartphone or regular desktop or laptop computers and it’s free to 7-day-a-week subscribers.
Here was last night’s front page. Note the custom nameplate.
Here is last night’s page two, containing mostly briefs and shorter snippets:
Assistant managing editor for presentation sent us these pages from Tuesday’s P-D P.M. and answered a few questions for us:
Q: Is the material in the evening edition available only in the evening edition? None of this is reachable via your web site?
A: Much of the PM edition stuff has been published on the site, but in various forms. For example we’ll go through live chats from our writers and cull the best exchanges for a story … same with conversations in our forums. Overall I would say that:
- 10 percent of the stuff is an early version of a story that might be in print in the following morning’s paper.
- 10 percent of the content is user generated … user photos, conversations from our chats, forums or the Post-Dispatch Facebook pages.
- 30 percent of the content is from breaking news coverage during the day that would appear on STLtoday at sometime during the day.
- 30 percent of the content is from Post-Dispatch online columns, reedited for the PM edition.
- 20 percent is wire content, either breaking news from the day, enterprisers that don’t run on STLtoday, or entertainment-based news
- 0 percent of it is something that would have been in the previous morning’s paper.
Tuesday’s page three held one big local story, two briefs and a large ad.
Q: You mention “tablet, desktop or smartphone.” Are there three different versions of the evening edition? Or is this one version, accessible via three avenues?
A: It’s basically one version, on all three platforms. Newspaper Direct is our e-edition partner. (They recently made a big splash with the Boston Globe‘s e-edition) The tablet version obviously has more functionality, richer user experience than the smart phone version, but all versions are designed to emulate the physical browsing of a newspaper.
Q: So P-D P.M. uses “responsive web design,” then?
A: No… newspaper direct does not use responsive web design. I think they redesign the product slightly for each different type of screen … it does not dynamically redraw like responsive design would.
Q: About what time each day is the evening edition available?
A: We tell customers it’s available for download at 6 p.m. … but it’s usually available by about 4:30 p.m.
Q: When did you launch this evening edition?
A: We’ve been promoting the P.M. edition about a month now. I think we announced it to our 7-day subscribers in early April. Now we’re making more noise about it so that both subscribers and non-subscribers know about it.
Tuesday’s page seven held entertainment news.
Q: How did this come to be?
A: This came to be after we realized how people were using the iPad, predominantly at night, and as a relaxing reading experience. So when we started on the e-Edition with Newspaper Direct, we realized we weren’t necessarily bound to some of our print conventions… We had color on every page, we could hyperlink to content … and we could deliver the news when we wanted. So as a bonus to our 7-day subscribers, we are supplementing their e-Editions with the PM e-editions.
Tuesday’s page eight was all sports: Two columns and a snappy, quick-hit roundup of quotes.
Q. Does it have a separate designer?
A: Right now, Wade Wilson, Tom Borgman and Carlos Ayulo are doing the bulk of the design work on it.
Q. What kind of response have you gotten from readers? Any clue yet how well this is going over?
A: I would say it’s a bit early to get the response.
We expect, any day now, to have native app versions available (currently tablet and mobile editions are seen through a browser or through a Newspaper Direct app).
We are getting about 300-500 subscribers signing up each week, and they do seem to enjoy the reading experience that the e-edition brings — although it’s certainly not for everyone. Many folks prefer either a traditional web browser experience or a native app, rather than seeing a digital replica of the newspaper. Others however, like the familiarity that the digital replica brings.
Interestingly, one reader sounded off on P-D P.M. by commenting on the Post-Dispatch web site:
Until the Globe-Democrat folded in 1984, the Post-Dispatch was an afternoon newspaper. This had been the case as part of the terms of their joint operating agreement since 1961. So the Post-Dispatch has been a morning newspaper for less than 30 years. In some ways this is a return to their roots, but in a digital format. Curious.
Read more about the new P-D P.M. edition here.
Average daily circulation for the Post-Dispatch is 191,631.
