Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Former News-Leader editor thrilled with idea of designing Gannett newspapers out ofr five cities

It won't be long before the Springfield News-Leader is being designed in Des Moines, Iowa, and former News-Leader Editor Kate Marymont is thrilled about it.

Ms. Marymont, who now holds the title of Vice President/News for Gannett, told the Society for News Design:

We want to provide top-notch, exclusive local content and print design is an important part of that. We believe that we can build superior design more effectively in five locations than trying to do it in 80 locations.

"The process: We’ve been experimenting. Of our 80 newspapers, 32 are designed, paginated and — in a few cases — copy-edited at other sites. We’ve tested the communication that is needed, built the relationships that are needed and proven to ourselves that the concept works. We weighed outside vendors but wanted Gannett designers handling our print journalism."
Ms. Marymont is doing an excellent job of toeing the Gannett line on this one, but it is just another step away from a local newspaper being a local newspaper.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kate, please come back to the News-Leader. We miss you.

This whole crew in Springfield are foreigners and don't have a clue where Cave Springs, Pearl and Harold are located.