A regional daily is to relaunch early next year with “a striking new design and feel”.
The Yorkshire Evening Post, based in Leeds, is calling for volunteers to join its “exclusive” reader panel ahead of the revamp to give their input on the plans.
The panel will be used to provide feedback on what the YEP has termed an “exciting period of change”.
A similar initiative was launched at fellow Johnston Press title the Northamptonshire Telegraph last month.
YEP editor Jeremy Clifford, pictured, said: “We are keenly aware that a newspaper is nothing without its readers.
“That’s why we are aiming to engage with our readers even more than we have done in the past.
“These are exciting times for the YEP and we’re hoping that people across Leeds will want to get involved with a paper that can be relied upon to stand up for their interests.”
The YEP previously ran a reader panel project which was launched in 2009, attracting more than 1,000 members within a year.
Original panel members are also being invited to sign up to the new venture.
No firm date has yet been set for the relaunch.
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The last “exciting” YEP relaunch and redesign was in January 2013.
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Cynics who endured other JP “relaunches” will wish the EP staff well and hope sales do not crash. The Spanish took our gold while JP wasted the family silver on something that could have been done better in house.
Reader panel is decent idea though, although hard to find one that is truly representative. Good luck.
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Again, Readers’ Panels.
The sort of people who sign up for these groups to ‘represent the people’ generally turn out to be not very representative, bringing with them long-standing issues which dominate their conversations. They have time on their hands, and will talk at length about not a lot in particular.
Good luck…
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The YEP was in the process of being redesigned as my colleagues and I were being made redundant by JP in 2012. Now we are in for another. Presumably, this means that the previous effort failed to excite readers. I would expect a decent design to have had a bit more longevity, especially as the designers of the templates, in Spain, (life is not so local) must have been paid so handsomely. We now have adverts designed in India, (life is even less local), house ads designed by agencies, (when better used to be done in-house), further reductions in editorial staff, fewer photographers, and less local news. Content is king. Without the appropriate, professional, experienced staff, Mr Clifford may be right when he talks about “a striking new design and feel”… only perhaps not in a good way.
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Desperation is the first word that comes to mind here. When you have to ask the readers what to put in the paper, you know you’re in trouble.
All past experience shows that ‘reader panels’ are made up of the usual suspects – opinionated windbags full of idealistic garbage who wouldn’t know a news story from a banana. There is bound to be at least one ‘good news’ advocate, plus the usual cabal of special pleaders who will be hoping to push their respective agendas.
If their views are taken on board, the paper will be a hodgepodge of good intentions gone wrong that will bore the readers stiff.
Hands up all those who’ve heard a ‘reader panellist’ say: ‘What we need is a fearless, hard-hitting campaigning newspaper, full of controversial and stimulating stories, that will keep local authorities on their toes and serve the cause of local democracy, whatever the commercial consequences.’
Exactly.
The essence of good editing is to produce a paper that readers find irresistible. I can’t remember the last time I saw an irresistible newspaper.
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Just seen, via twitter, that the YEP “is on hunt for community correspondents as part of our early 2015 relaunch.” All sounds a little rushed and driven by panic. It tells us what we need to know in terms of the future quality of the paper, and the value JP places on professional journalists. Of course, there are many former employees that could do a great job!
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As someone said before, we had one of these reader projects about 15 years ago and it cost £1m or more. The readers told us what they wanted, we gave it to them, and then they stopped buying the YEP in even greater numbers. What it does is gives a vociferous minority the opportunity (they hope) to influence what goes in the paper. Obviously, you’re not going to get anyone who has appeared in a good court story which was well read asking for more of that type of content. We did once have some very successful community pages compiled by a top reporter and laid out by one of the best subs. So back to basics can work, but you’ve got to put the resources into it.
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As one of the many editorial staff who lost their jobs in the ‘exciting’ revamps dating from 2009 to 2011, I find this ‘exciting’ news physically disgusting.
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Beware the relaunch. It cost my JP paper thousands of readers it never got back and made paper look like the blood had been drained from it.
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What became of the newly created role of Chief Creative Officer? Will he/she be involved in the redesign?
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