Slimmed down Tampa Tribune debuts today

After months of rumors, the new, slimmed-down, two-section weekday Tampa Tribune arrived at subscribers' doors this morning, adopting many of the reduction measures other newspapers have implemented in recent weeks and years -- including rival the St. Petersburg Times.

A color marketing insert explains most of the changes, along with a front-page note from executive editor Janet Coats. All the metro news and op-ed stuff has been placed in one section, with local news emphasized on the front page. The second section is a classified ads section much like our BayLink section, featuring some of the most popular standing elements of a traditional features section -- horoscope, puzzles, movie listings and comics -- placed inside with the classifieds.

At the center of this redesign is the main section, which numbered 30 pages this morning. Filled with local news, business news, sports, national news and an op-ed/letters page, this section featured an array of short pieces -- collections of paragraph-long "briefs" and stories that rarely run longer than 10 paragraphs. Few stories also "jump" in a continuation from one page to another, further helping contain the material. 

A third Bucs Bonus section appears Mondays -- though given the recent success of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, it's a shame they didn't have the flexibility to use that section for Rays news this week. Tuesdays through Thursdays, sports will also appear inside the main section. Fridays, a separate sports section looks ahead to events over the weekend.

The newspaper's Friday Extra entertainment tabloid remains, along with Wednesday News & Tribune neighborhoods sections and the home-buying section on Fridays.

Readers saw the new Sunday paper yesterday, complete with a new Business and Money section, a new op-ed section called Views, and a new, 24-page tabloid features section called Baylife magazine.

For writers, it will be a transition from thinking about longer storytelling to brief bursts of information and graphics. For readers, it will mean getting used to a smaller newspaper at the same price -- a transition the St. Petersburg Times also asked of customers not long ago.

Looking at similar redesigns presented everywhere from the Orlando Sentinel to the Chicago Tribune, it's obvious this the wave of the foreseeable future for modern metro newspapers. The one unanswered question: How will readers handle it?

*

Comments

[David]

The only 'wave of the future' is that before too long, newspapers will no longer be published. The Internet is the news source for the GenXer's, and they certainly aren't willing to part with the $150+ a year to get the SPT/TT delivered to the house.

The newspaper business is under tremendous pressure -- classified ads are going on Craigslist, display ads are going elsewhere, and ink/paper costs continue to rise. Realistically, there are VERY few papers that are worth more than 50 cents a day. IF you can't raise your price, but your costs keep increasing, it's a matter of time before you stop selling that product.

[Jim Johnson]

Eric,

When will the St Pete Times start using RSS feeds for its stories like almost every other newspaper on the planet?

I almost never have time to come to TampaBay.com because I read news in a reader... including the feed for The Feed.

Advice to your higher ups: If you want to attract more website visitors, at least publish a summary version of stories in a feed -- easily getting more people like me to come over to your main website.

Just a thought.

Sure looks like a newsier version of TBT.

It's craptastic!

[Ron]

At our house, we hate this new format. We can no longer share the newspaper in the morning while we have coffee. We won't be renewing once our subscription expires.

[Eric Deggans]

If you are seeing that the front page news isn't updated more than once every 48 hours, you aren't reading the St. Pete Times website correctly. Our web site front page news stories are changed many times over the course of a single day.

Either your web browser is holding onto an old version of the site in its cache or you may have misstated which web site you were watching. Could you be talking about TBO.com?

[Dave]

Well, most of us news junkies go online nowadays.

By the way, the St. Pete Times website is just tragic. You should expect the front page news to be updated more than once every 48 hours. You have to search like a crazy person to find an editorial comment now.

[dreaming]

i honestly havent seen it yet. but it sounds pathetic.

the trib and the sptimes should convert their print products to free give-away status like their websites. circulation, or readership at least, will go up.

in this economy, with a worldwide recession/depression looking worse by the day, it's not justifiable for consumers to pay 50 cents for an old product that is half its former size and worth.

[drinklime]

wont buy it

[Lin Young]

We, or at least this reader, is handling the changes in newspapers the same way I'm responding to other changes: I'm changing habits, the way I spend my time, what I spend it on. In short, I'm constantly re-evaluating my priorities and how I spend my resources, regardless of what those resources are, such as time, attention, money or space. In other words, readers are in as much a state of flux as newspapers are and no has a crystal ball to know what that ultimately means. This is a time of huge chain-reaction upheavals, none of us can control how anyone else reacts to what's going on, which means the only certainty is uncertainty.