Interview with Newton Kansan editor on Incubator Program

The Kansan, which is a six-day-a-week afternoon paper, serves a city of about 18,000 people. The city is known for its high population of Mennonites — which brought winter wheat with them from Russia — and being a big railroad hub, among other claims to fame. I’d describe Newton as a forward-thinking city with conservative values. Shocking — being in the middle of Kansas and all!

When I was hired about four years ago, one of the things I was brought in to do was a redesign. I had done several redesigns at other
newspapers, both small (weekly) to large (city of 80,000). We were in line to be redesigned when we were sold to GateHouse. We believe the newspaper needs a fresh look. It looks much as it did when I worked here previously as a reporter about 15 years ago. The Kansan staff has been brainstorming and talking about the redesign for years. We’re excited about the upcoming process!

• A clear vision of how the Incubator process works.
• A belief that our opinions and ideas will be taken into account through the process.
• Four clear goals we’re hoping to meet with the redesign.

• Give the newspaper a fresh look, including adding some new features.
• Work to “young” up the paper.
• Use more alternative story formats. We use many of them, but we’d like to look for more creative ways to utilize the formats to attract readers.

Pick the brains of the staff of the whole newspaper. Their brains are filled with great ideas. They are, after all, talking to our readers every day about their likes and dislikes. Then, share those ideas with the Incubator folks.

Depending on how much content we change, such as columnists, I expect to hear both good and bad. When I first came here, we changed from using a round bullet to using a square box to point out bullet points.

We even had a few readers call in about that! Most will be happy with the new look, I expect. But there will be those who don’t want anything to change.