Thursday, June 4, 2009

Flint Journal arrives early, an improvement

OK, I was critical last week of the new Flint Journal design and some obvious copy editing problems and spelling errors, but I have to give them a little credit for today's paper.

Not as many problems, and although I still don't like the font styles, the paper looked a lot better today than the first attempts last weekend.

No breaking news to speak of, but some decent features in the front section of the paper. Still, I don't understand why Midland, Bay City and Saginaw news are included in my Flint area paper, but it must be a function of a central copy desk.

The Sports section continues to carry the motto: "MORE THAN JUST THE SCORE AND WE MEAN IT." As one of the posters here said, it is sophomoric. If you must have a motto, how about "More than just the scores." Says the same thing without the snarky add on. Or maybe they had the same design company that came up with the Acorn logo for AnnArbor.com come up with the motto.

It will be interesting to see if people arranging funerals delay the services until days when the paper is publishing. I only saw a couple of instances in the obituaries where people who died last weekend or Monday had funerals that had already occurred. It might be that people will delay services a day or two to make sure people see the notices in the paper. I could very well be wrong, but we'll watch it.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any truth to the rumor today that Valley Publishing had some problems getting out Saginaw and Bay City? I no longer subscribe to either, so don't know firsthand.

Anonymous said...

My 21 year old son asked me why they are making the paper look "old"..

Good to see the "Flint" back in the logo even if the paper isn't all about Flint anymore.

Anonymous said...

20-year subscriber here.

wifey tossed the paper down in disgust tonight. The sports did not have a roundup on the state track meet ... several local kids did quite well ...

which was this week ...

which means the THU-FRI-SAT-SUN days ain't gonna be roundups.

All the news we missed won't print!

(Insert sound of ominous bell tolling slowly here ...)

Anonymous said...

"Any truth to the rumor today that Valley Publishing had some problems getting out Saginaw and Bay City? I no longer subscribe to either, so don't know firsthand."

Yep, we didn't get a paper today (Saginaw News). Heard it was a "production" problem and that only a handful of Bay City Times papers were delivered. Great start to the new product, eh?

Anonymous said...

That's what happens when you try to cram 9 months of work into 2 months with new help. BTW Flint is running the show. So there ya go.

Anonymous said...

Yep, it's very true that the Saginaw News, except for boxes I'm told, never got delivered. And the Bay City paper only got delivered to a few homes. They've had all these months to plan for this and they can't get it right? Doesn't bode well for the future. Considering the content, though, maybe out of sight, out of mind is best.

Anonymous said...

How can Flint be "running the show" when 98 percent of the managers in this new regime are from Saginaw or BC? Flint's managers, as well as many other very key personnel, were put in front of a firing squad. But the new EE and the former Saginaw editor somehow had a complete coup in keeping their own trusted sidekicks. As one FJ reporter put it, how come the biggest paper of the 3, with the most amount of talent, got hit the hardest? Maybe it comes down to the former editor, who hung his entire FJ staff out to dry, then left for greener pastures as the building was just about to implode.

Anonymous said...

Maybe I'm part of the problem, not the snarky new solution, but I was once employed by this fine organization before, like so many others, getting unceremoniously kicked to the curb - and I don't subscribe to any of these publications anymore or follow them on the internet.

Been there, done that.

Anonymous said...

Before this fiasco started VP was not late in years getting the paper to the door step. This had nothing to do with production at all. It was poor planning by the higher ups from Flint and GR. GR is where most of the blame should go. Their new system was not ready and Flint IS running the show out there. Valley is all new people and they lost some VERY good people as well as Flint. I personally do not want to see any jobs lost at any of the 3 papers and would not feel any better about it if they just did this in Flint. Maybe I am alone..........