That’s one thing that broadsheet newspapers can do better than the internet, than iPads, than anything else: Sheer knock-the-reader-over-the-head visual oomph.
And that’s what U-T San Diego is emphasizing in the revamp of its Sunday product. The marketing slogan for the revamp is “It’s a big deal.” And size is what the paper is pushing in both its campaign and — as far as I can tell — in the new pages themselves.
The new front page is nearly all visual above the fold: A new Sunday nameplate, bolder promos and a huge picture.
These are pages that Kris Viesselman — U-T San Diego‘s vice president for product development and chief creative officer — posted to her Facebook wall last night.
Sports, too, shows an enormous section-front picture — this one, from the archives.
And the new biz section makes room for a huge illustration.
All the new space is best-used, perhaps, in the new Sunday In Depth section. This is printed on high-quality paper, Kris writes.
There is plenty of room here for photo pages. That should make U-T San Diego‘s photography department pretty happy.
And there’s room for long-form journalism as well.
Today’s section even includes a full-page graphic tied to the cover story.
The section seems to dwell on spurring conversation about ideas for the future. Just in case the reader doesn’t catch on, the labels emphasize this as well.
The Opinion pages are tucked into the back of the section. The Opinion “cover” also uses a huge illustration today.
Like any good editorial pages, U-T San Diego has kept theirs clean and crisp.
With that much text, any clutter here would make these unreadable.
Today’s paper also includes a 20-page Arts and Culture section, Kris writes. Which means another huge visual display on the section front…
…great play of visuals on inside arts pages…
…a picture page for society and style…
…and a gorgeous picture for the travel page.
U-T San Diego posted a number of videos this week to explain the changes to readers. I can’t embed them here, but I can link to them. Here’s the main video, which I recommend strongly. There are also videos for…
- The new In Depth section
- The Arts and Culture section
- Changes in the sports section
- A new consumer section called Shopping and Services
This is just the latest in a long line of changes made to U-T San Diego over the past couple of years. The paper went through a massive redesign less than two years ago, back when it was still called the Union-Tribune. Back in January of this year, the paper formalized its shorthand name and made a small change to its nameplate to reflect this.
Average daily circulation for U-T San Diego is 230,742.
