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Dyson at Large: Newest weekly must get to grips with its name

WARNING: If you dislike pedants, please don’t read this week’s blog.

But just what is the UK’s newest daily-turned-weekly newspaper called?

According to the masthead, it’s ‘The Liverpool Post’ with a huge visual emphasis on ‘The’…

This new masthead doesn’t read too well though, does it? The natural way to say what you see is ‘Liverpool The Post’, before you realise the words are meant to flow the other way round.

Compare this stumbling effect to the old daily masthead which read clearly the way it should as ‘Liverpool Daily Post’…

At least the new masthead uses size to select two important words that might be the way the paper has always been referred to locally – simply ‘The Post’.

Not that this works if you’re a regular online reader, because on the internet the masthead on all the title’s pages is still Liverpool Daily Post, and this means any references to the paper carry the old name.

This maintenance of the old masthead online is deliberate, of course, indicating to readers that there is still a ‘daily’ web news service available to complement the new weekly newspaper.

But I think it’s a mistaken strategy to relaunch the paper as ‘The Liverpool Post’ then not to reinforce this name as the website, which is clearly where most long-term marketing is going to take place.

It’s also confusing to the eye, like on this web page where, at the time of writing, you see both ‘The Liverpool Post’ and the ‘Liverpool Daily Post’ mastheads, and then ‘Liverpool Post’ in the headline (the latter with no ‘The’ or ‘Daily’).

This gets worse in print, with at least seven different examples of the newspaper’s brand referred to in the launch edition on 19 January:

  • ‘The Liverpool Post’ is the page one masthead;
  • ‘www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk’ is the web address immediately underneath that masthead;
  • ‘Liverpool Post’ is in the first par of the splash on page one, also in the address to write to with complaints on page two, and in the editor’s welcome letter on page three (not using ‘The’);
  • ‘Liverpool Daily Post’ is the old image used for the paper’s ‘Get On Board’ campaign logo on page 15;
  • ‘The Post’  is the title above the paper’s editorial leader column on page 16 (no ‘Liverpool’);
  • [email protected]’ is the email address for letters on page 17;
  • ‘Liverpool Post’ is in the address on page 17 (no ‘The’);
  • ‘The Post’  comes before the news desk numbers for readers to call and fax, also on page 17;
  • ‘liverpooldailypost’ is within the url address for the paper’s online comment forum, again on that changing list on page 17;
  • ‘Post’ as a single word is in every byline reference throughout the paper, as in ‘Post Health Reporter’,  and in all section heads, as in ‘Post Sport’, ‘Post Culture’, and so on, (not using ‘The’ or ‘Liverpool’); and
  • it’s back to the full ‘The Liverpool Post’ title on all official advertising references throughout the classified section, for example on all the Reader Holiday house ads.

The paper cannot, of course, use the same long title throughout, but it can and should be properly abbreviated – ‘The Liverpool Post’ becoming ‘The Post’, not bastardised to ‘Liverpool Post’ or ‘Post’ and constantly referring back to the ‘Daily’ online brand.

Or perhaps it would have been less confusing not to involve the ‘The’, simply taking the ‘Daily’ out of the old title to create ‘Liverpool Post’ in the new masthead. But by making such a big visual decision on ‘The’ atop the new front page this is not the case.

For The Liverpool Post to become firmly established as a well-known weekly newspaper, I feel it must decide what it’s called in full and what it can then be referred to in short, making sure that every sub understands this style rule and applies it consistently in print and online.

Enough pedantry. What about the content of the new weekly?

I was impressed with the strong investigative splash on 4,000 local NHS jobs that could go by 2014, and appreciated the space given to the detail on pages four and five.

Less likeable was the mish-mash of picture boosts on page two and then the hard-to-decipher ‘look back’ and ‘look ahead’ sections on page three.

There was a lack of strong news leads on other early pages – page six led on a councillor’s retirement, page seven on proposed cuts to automatic fire alarm responses, page nine was comment and pages ten and eleven contained a soft business interview headlined ‘Bob the builder is a man with a plan’.

The 18-page news section contained just 17 actual news reports, the other 39 stories being comment, diary or letters, an imbalance that should quickly be addressed.

The ‘Post Business’ section from page 19 was more satisfying: there were 61 stories on 21 pages and 51 of these were news reports. But this strength was diluted by then turning into another 12 pages of ‘Post Lifestyle’ which, despite a reasonable mix of fashion, food and drink, travel and puzzles, just didn’t gel well with business.

Much, much better was ‘Post Culture’, a 24-page pull-out fizzing with well-scribed interviews with the likes of Jennifer Saunders, thoughtful local reviews and detailed listings. And ‘Post Sport’ was a decent read, thanks to the efforts of Ian Doyle who wrote more than half its 13 pages.

Overall, the content was good enough and will soon get better as skilled writers and editors get used to grappling with a 112-page paper, rather than what used to be a slim daily.

Let’s just hope the branding becomes more decisive.

8 comments

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  • February 1, 2012 at 11:58 am
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    We obviously have different design tastes when designing clear fronts.
    I think it’s a mess.
    The picture to go with the splash isn’t clear – it looks more like a rapture moment than someone losing their job.
    The splash head is clunky – you try reading it out loud.
    The headline, byline and intro are arranged both centred (for the elements) and then left justfied for the text, creating an optical headache, compunded by the strange ‘turn to page 4′ graphic they’ve used.
    Why on earth would you use non-ranging numerals in a headline?

    Then there’s the body type. For a new paper for the 21st century, why use fonts that have been around for ages? There are heaps of brilliant new typefaces – some of which are open source, thus pleasing the bean counters – that could have been used instead.

    Agree with you on the masthead though. A wasted opportunity to do something better.

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  • February 1, 2012 at 12:05 pm
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    I entirely agree with Steve that the branding appears confused and inconsistent, but will it have an impact on sales? I doubt it. A consistent brand will help with the marketing of the newspaper and website and might, just might, help with sales and traffic but I suspect the effect will be nominal. I reckon we in the industry are far more bothered about mastheads and visual identity than are the customers we’re seeking to serve.

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  • February 1, 2012 at 12:51 pm
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    Given that this is a report on a “big city” paper, It would have been helpful to know how the paper stands in relation to other Liverpool papers such as the Echo. Is it from the same stable or in competition?

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  • February 1, 2012 at 2:50 pm
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    Love a bit of pedantry so here is mine. See if you agree Steve:

    Papers titled the “Evening News” that now come out in the morning. ie. The Scarborough Evening News.

    So instead of the news of the day it is the news of yesterday.

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  • February 1, 2012 at 3:10 pm
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    I think it looks like it’s called The Post – but it’s the Liverpool edition (as if there’s a Manchester and York edition etc.)
    But then I would say the same for the original masthead – it makes it look like it’s the Liverpool edition of the Daily Post.

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  • February 1, 2012 at 5:21 pm
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    I’ve had two other comments by email:

    1/ From an ex-regional editor – “Tough but fair. It’s these kind of brand details (or lack of them) that confuse the reader and undermine the relaunch. TM really should have known better, but I think the carelessness shows they’re really not that bothered by The Post – it’ll be the decline of the Echo that’s really exercising them, I’d bet.” (In fairness, I think it’s early days and still easy to turn around the branding if Trinity bosses feel that reader groups/business readers agree…)

    2/ From a designer up north, who suggested – “Here’s how the Yorkshire Post displays its emphatic masthead: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2011/8/25/1314260905245/Yorkshire-Post-007.jpg and a matching website name and logo: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/ .”

    All food for thought…

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  • February 1, 2012 at 5:42 pm
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    Phil: The Liverpool Post is published by Trinity Mirror, as is its sister, the Liverpool Echo. As a daily, the Liverpool Daily Post was a morning, largely covering business, political, sports and cultural paper, and sold just 8,217 five days a week, which was edging towards not being profitable. The Echo, a traditional evening (nowadays part overnight), is still one of Britain’s best-selling dailies, selling 85,463 six days a week.

    ‘house rules': I see your point, but feel that there is no particular need to take ‘Evening’ out if that’s part of its established, historical name. (On the Birmingham Mail, we did take ‘Evening’ out, but that was five years before overnight came and because its traditional name had not included ‘Evening’ until the 1970s.)

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  • February 6, 2012 at 4:18 pm
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    Well… they say God loves a pedant… at least I hope that’s the case!?

    And you are right… “Liverpool The Post” that must be part of the Yoda, Jedi warrior school of subbing.

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