[print] The Oregonian To Cease Publishing "This Week"

3467.

This Week, the mid-week advertising circular published for about a decade now by The Oregonian, Oregon's largest newspaper, is soon to be no more.

The rubric has been worn by more than one publication in the greater Portland area over the last two and a half decades. During the 1990s, This Week was a light news and advertising tabloid published by a concern based in Wilsonville whose name escapes me. There wasn't much in it other than a ton of ads, but what was there was pretty good. There was a weekly column about Portland and Portland history called "Round The Roses" by Karl Klooster (fortunately these have been collected into books which are probably available at Powells) that was memorable and readable.

This Week expired sometime around the turn of the 21st Century. Eventually The Oregonian picked it up for its mid-week ad circular, which was rounded out with what they termed "The Best of FoodDay", The Oregonian's mid-week culinary section. FoodDay, to our eyes, had an uneven history over the years: It would start strong and then dwindle off as fewer and fewer interesting things got put in and it became more devoted to trend-chasing rather than exploring the culinary landscape. Over time, though, the This Week, under The Big O's auspice just kind of slowly dwindled away. Lately it's just been a plea to subscribe, sometimes with an interesting article from the Food section of The Oregonian but just as likely with something put in from a national news service or The Washington Post and half a page devoted to an adult coloring book panel.

In view of the wasting away of This Week, the edition we got today amounts to pretty much a mercy-killing:

TW was, interestingly enough, a broadsheet, the last broadsheet publication The Oregonian issued. Typically there was a big ol' Bi-Mart ad, and that was useful. So, if there's any real victim here, I'd say it would be Bi-Mart.

But if you want what little TW had to offer, you'll just have to plump for an edition of The O. And so that goes.

Though it could have ranged from four to eight pages at its height, it was only one rather stiff sheet now, as it has been for a while. The back looked like this:

A recipe for madeleines, sourced, as it would happen, from The Washington Post, an appeal to subscribe to the Fun Size Oregonian, and as much of what we oldies used to call "the want ads" as they could fit in. But, here's a thing: let's zoom in on the madeleines recipe, shall we?

It was written by Dorie Greenspan, special to The Washington Post (I guess that means she's a stringer) and is brief history of the French cake-biscuit, complete with some interpretation of the shell-shape (an homage to religious pilgrims who used the scallop shell as a badge) and the obligatory, if awkwardly-worded and inaccurate reference to Proust (referring to a short paragraph in 'one of the 20th century novelist's long books, 'Remembrance of Things Past''), paired with a tempting recipe for her own coffee-and-cinnamon inflected version (which sounds tempting to me, but probably is a horror to a purist). No worries for the tradtionalist, though; the traditional madeleine is recapitulated in that final paragraph, though amusingly noted as a 'variation'.

So, in the final edition of This Week, the only original local content is a big front-page thing telling you that this was the last This Week. The rest, they got from somewhere else, which is kind of an exegisis of the state of Portland media to me, these days. It used to be so colorful.

But then, I realized a thing. The last valuable bit of information imparted by this publication was a French baked delight famous for triggering memories that recover unremembered memory. Could the layout artist be sending a bittersweet message here?

When it comes to Portland media, most of the best is a remembrance of things past.

Abysinnia, This Week.

And so it goes.

[print] You Can't Expect A Redesign Rollout Without a Memorable Glitch

3395.

The rollout of the new re-re-redesigned The Oregonian was pointed out here two missives back. And it's not a bad thing.

But the redesigns of The O haven't been without their oopsies. Here's a highly amusing one. The fact that involves the comics page is sheerest coincidence.

Peep, if you will:

On the left, the section for Thursday, October 6th. On the right, Wednesday, October 5th. There is one difference: Thursday's section is headed Puzzles, whereas Wednesdays is headed Puzzles & Comics. 

But that's it. That's the only difference. Thursday's content is the exact same thing as Wednesdays.
Check the detail here. Wednesday's:

vice Thursday's:

The downside is, you've seen it all before; but that's the upside too, as you already know how to do the puzzles, you know how the comics turn out, and if your horoscope was splendid on Wednesday, well, Thursday's going to be just as good. 

And so that goes.

[print] The New New Oregonian Front Page, In The Flesh

3393.

Saturday was our weekly sojourn to that bastion of a democratically informed public, the Mighty MultCoLib, and I finally got my chance to lay my meat-peepers on the real thing, and get an idea of how visually impressive, the new new The Oregonian design is.

Here, on the table in front of me, the paper:

A thing that was merely a protoype a few days ago is now a thing that's a thing. It's still a tabloid thing, though; one feature of the re-design is certainly not a return to broadsheet-ish.

The impression one gets is not so much that of a newspaper as some sort of hybrid between a newspaper and a magazine.

The modified blackletter O which serves as the "Oregonian Media Group"''s logo has the pride of place on the page, in the upper left-hand corner, where most of us really enter a page. That's smart; if you think of the page as a battlefield, that's where the invader (your reader) will make their landing. This also sets up a natural idea of grid, espeically the way they've sliced off the O on the right, giving a hard line with which to define a visual column and to draw the eye right down to where an important story could be. The bottom of the O extended left could also be a visual boundary, but somewhat of a weaker one.

The name of the publication, always a good thing to have, still plays but a supporting role in the layout.

Here, the O not only defines a natural visual progression from the top left down but the top left to the right across the top of the page, where a couple of notable interior news stories are called out.

The foliage photo in the middle of the page is allowed to break out of its bounds and overlap the big O, providing a bit of visual iconoclasm that has the result of drawing the eye into the one direction that the big O in the corner does not directly encourage. This space, already defined by the trend of the big graphic to pull the eye along the top and down the side, is ideal for a bit of color. In this case, a brief seasonal word about Portland's Hoyt Aboretum as a blandishment to visit, along with hours of operation and encouragement to visit online sources where more information can be found about the place, as well as online links to more images.

Where's the front-page index, you say? Right here, at the bottom, almost invisible.

The use of the fonts, Tiempos and Guardian Egyptian, are appropriate, but like the front-page index, the bylines and slug lines have also been rendered nearly invisible. I'd punch that up just a little. And I've noticed the type in the headline about the Arboretum, which is one I don't recognize and don't remember seeing it announced, is for subject headings in many of the stories. It scans well and has a genteel feel to it.

My verdict? Since The Oregonian has been going through it's changes the last few years, I've not been a fan. I don't get the idea of scaling the paper down to a tabloid size; thus robbed of the pleasure of not reading a broadsheet, the whole experience is a little less fun. I'm still making my peace with it. That is an ongoing project.

This redesign is, however, a solid idea. Reducing the O to a small box in the upper left was a change that was visually aggravating, and making the old masthead type even smaller broke my heart. A classic masthead like that is something you boast, not something you tuck away. So, even though the design fixation on the O is something that strikes me awkwardly, the way the design manifests it is an improvement, and the way it's put into service to catalyze the page layout here is sensible. It does bring a welcome sense of personality to the layout that the redesign lacked.

That was the message I read between the lines of the editor's blog post last week, and that's what's been accomplished. 

[print] Proofreading, Schmoofreading

3388.

I know it might be in poor taste to poke fun at a prototype layout, but geez, Soylent News™, how hard can it be to recognize this one?

Calorado?

Next thing you know, this state will be called Idahoregon. 

Proofreading. It saves … well, something. 

[print] The Oregonian: Redesigning Again, For The First Time, Again

3387.

So, I just peeped this on OLive:

Meet your new-new, New new new The Oregonian, Portland. Editor Mark Katches has some joss-stick and whalesong about it in his Editor's Notebook posting, including that it's starting today. From Tuesday, October 3rd, 2016, then, this will be the look of your morning paper, should you choose to look at it.

Featuring a new headline and body type, the most noticeable change is the releasing of the O from that tiny box they tried to imprison it in. The gothic blackletter wordmark The Oregonian also seems to have enlarged a bit. The technical aspect of the type, as related by Katches, is this:

Although the body type in the printed paper is the exact same size as the one readers are used to seeing (8.6 points), focus group participants overwhelmingly felt our new font and style was more readable. We've switched the body type from Guardian Egyptian to Tiempos Text – something that really only will matter to typography nerds. Bottom line: It is designed to read bigger.

We Portlanders read big. And, I am a typography nerd, so, for compariston, here's Guardian Egyptian:

Guardian Egyptian with drop caps. Source.

And here's Tiempos:

Tiempos Headline, with Text below. Source.

Also visible at the editor's blog post is a sample of what The Sunday Oregonian's going to be looking like. The 'nameplate' is going to be more the traditional style, across the top, a more old-fashioned newspaper approach. Of course, it's still all going to be tabloid, not broadsheet, but at least it won't look bad like it used to. If we're going to have to endure this Fun Size paper, at least it won't look awkward and uncomfortable.

The big O is going to have more fun on the front page, that's for certain. As Katches says:

Don't be surprised to see photographs and illustrations "interacting" with our Big O from time to time.

… which suggests to me that they're going to play similar graphic design games with the O as USAToday is playing with the big blue dot, which I actually like the sound of … I scoffed at the USAToday redesign when I first saw it, but the visual puns they play with that dot have actually been witty more often than not.

Also, the longtime Foodday section is simply going to be called Food from here on out. Whether or not the three ending letters were given buyouts or simply laid off is not known as of this writing.

I only have a virtual version of the paper to look at; as soon as I get a look at the newsprint-version, I'll add some more remarks and snarks.

[print] Soylent News™'s New Calendar Strikes Again …

3128.

… but, on what day, it's kinda hard to tell. But then, isn't time an arbitrary thing, especially when NCA3 is doggedly, tirelessly, relentlessly redefining today's The Oregonian as a thing to be read?

We return to the scene of the crime, Library Day (accept no substitutes), and The Wife™, who is doing her usual weekly catch-up, and peeps it. Here's the wide-angle view:

So stipulated. And, now, the closeup.

Yep. As documented previously, there's been the Julian, the Gregorian, and now, the Oregonian Calendar. Didn't like the way Sunday, August 11th, 2014 worked out for you?

Don't worry, Soylent News™ is giving you a do-over on Monday, August 11th 2014.

But, as documented earlier, remember, it's always Tuesday at the new Fun-Size™Oregonian. 

And Tuesday is Soylent News™ day. 

[print] It's Always Tuesday In The New Fun Size™ Oregonian

3123.

Changing calendars is nothing new, of course. The Julian calendar was upgraded to the Gregorian calendar, an in Ethiopia, they use a version of the calendar that includes leap days once every four years regardless (instead of omitting it in years evenly divisible by 400, as we do), resulting in the oddity (to us, anyway), that New Years Day, 2000, didn't happen for residents of Addis Abebe until September 11th, 2007. It is currently 2007 by the Ge'ez calendar.

However, in the West, we still keep to the Gregorian calendar, but here in the Beaver State, we've upgraded again … to The Oregonian Calendar.

It was revealed to us during our usual visit to the library. The Wife™goes through the week's Fun Size™ Oregonians which, as I've mentioned before, we never seem to have trouble getting, and she's frustrated, wondering where last Wednesday's paper was.

At last she lays it out day-by-day.

Oh, wait, what's this then?

Now, on my calendar, things don't run that way.

As our friend, the vintage Casio PV-S400 Pocket Viewer PDA will tell you, Monday the 21s is followed by Tuesday … the 22nd. The 23rd isn't supposed to come until Wendesday. 

Unless …

They've decided to upgrade our very calendar? Could that be? I mean, the modern The Oregonian is working hard to redefine our very idea of a newspaper as something to be read. Why not? But this isn't a calendar upgrade so much as a modern calendar levelling up, introducing new days in new sequences, without warning to the general population.

Kind of like reality until you find a Konami cheat for it.

But more research is called for. Stabilizing the test subject on the examining table, the patient is opened to examine the interior makeup … and IT'S STILL TUESDAY …

No need to panic. It was Tuesday, the 22nd, all along … they just hid it inside.

Of course, now Tuesday the 23rd follows Tuesday the 22nd. Mayhap Tuesday the 24th, after that, Tuesday the 25th, ad nauseam …  it's always Tuesday in Portland now. 

And it just stands to reason.

Tuesday is, after all, Soylent News™ day. 

[pdx] When Soylent News™ Stops Consuming People, It Will Eat Itself

3083.

This just in, via Randy Stapilus, blogmaster at the Ridenbaugh Press:

Post by Randy Stapilus.

Ai, yi, and and an ever lovin' yi. If Randy's source is correct then the circulation at The Formerly Big O is now about 63 percent of what it was … six months ago? 

Six months? 

Holy moly.

I make a lot of fun of the decline of The O. I do it basically to keep from crying and dying inside. Portland, Oregon is the 26th largest city in the fourth most populous country in the history of countries. Our 'daily' (not if you get it delivered any more, it ain't, of course), in its new 'fun size', once had bigger ambitions than the number of clicks it could get on a story at the website. It hurts, so I wiggle my ears and stick my tongue out and remind you all that Tuesday is Soylent News™ day, but I'm not happy about this. Not really. I daren't think they care, either; they stopped caring about my level of the socio-economic strata some time ago.

For a time, I delivered the pape, when I was a younger dude. True story.

A great American city deserves a great American newspaper. Sadly, The Oregonian is no longer that paper. Gone are the voices that used to make it great, and I see no Margie Boulét, no Phil Stanford, and certianly no Jonathan Nicholas (remember him, folks?), no 'appointment column reading'.

But the comics are in color, at least. Yay.

Maybe The Columbian can speak for us? They seem to still publish a newspaper intended for grownups, 7 days a week. The Statesman-Journal's looking better and better, all of a sudden, and at least it's published in the state capital. That ought to count for something.

In the meantime, the readership of Soylent News™ is apparently precipitously dwindling … but, don't think of it as deserting the paper.

We're just conciously decoupling.

Remember, Tuesday is Soylent News™ day.

[pdx] Meet The New "Fun-Size" Oregonian

3045.

Welcome to the new era. The Oregonian has gone post-newspaper.

They still publish one, mind, in a sense of the word. Newsprint is reeled off rolls, run through presses, and ink deposited in patters resembling letters, words, pictures, and such, in parseable array.

I had an idea of what I was in for when The Wife™ and myself stopped by the Jackson's Shell station at 122nd and Division before our weekly bout of Library time (you should all have a weekly Library day, by the way. Some sort of intellectual life. It's free. It won't kill you). Seeing those little The Sunday Oregonian early editions had generated an emotion that I don't think I'll ever be able to put into words.

Finally arriving out our branch and setting up for an afternoon of browsing, reading, and writing, we found several of The New Breed racked up where the should be. And, actually, that was rather odd. Since we no longer (for a bunch of reasons both practical and intellectual) subscribe to the pape, we catch up over the week at the Library. Typically, it was tough to find the week's editions; they were out around the building, all being read. Today, they were all in position, with no competition for reading them.

"They're all there," Wife™ says. "Nobody else is reading them."

And that is strange. Maybe it isn't a thing. Time will tell.

Left: a traditional broadsheet. Right: The Oregonian, "Fun-Size" edition.

 To be honest, I was having trouble visualizing such a small paper. The tabloid "Fun-Size" format has been identified with newspapers that are thought of as newspapers because they can't adequately be described as something else (e.g., National Enquirer), or major city dailies who were redesigned by people who were more interested in money than news (the post-Murdoch Chicago Sun-Times comes to mind).

Well, on the upside, my brain didn't burst into flames and I didn't cry and die inside when looking at this stunted little thing. World didn't halt spinning on its axis and career into the Sun. So, there's that.

But I do note that the Fun-Size edition debuted on the 2nd of April. I can only conclude that this is because if they rolled it out on the 1st, they would send the mother of all mixed messages.

The difference in layout is striking. The pre-April 2nd Oregonian carried the classic banner black-letter announcing the paper's title, a touch this old-fashioned mind always liked. In the stripe below the title, the wording Always On Oregonlive.com can be seen. There was a time they boasted of the Pulitzer they won there. We've come so far.

The current version shrinks the proud title to a minisculeness above the new-look Oregonian Media Group logo, a redesign which amounted to filling in the right side of the blackletter capital O.

The section heading. 'Memba when you could get the Living section or the Opinion section? Not no more, chum. Takes a sharp eye to deduce where one section takes up and the other leaves off.

The new Fun Size's section are all stapled together, a practice they are most proud of, ciding that they are the only daily in America to use stapled sections. They do it Europe, you know. The Fun Size's sections are nested within one another. The above it Saturdays. Tuesday, April 2nd's, was arranged thusly:

If you didn't pay attention to the table of contents, here's how you know you've stumbled into the Metro section of Saturday's paper, which is subsumed into the Main section:

The comics are all in color. This is a mixed blessing. Yay, because color comics, but, you know, some of the more richly-colored comics tend to look muddy when printed on newsprint. So, points for style here, but I actually preferred them in black and white a little more.

I will concede points for solid, sensible design as far as it goes, though. This Business section front page is a good example. Each new section has a signature color, and the front page's upper left ear is a square of that color. The boundaries of this square, extended out, give solid spines along which to organize and arrange the rest of the content. If the page layout of the Fun Size edition is based on modules, I'm betting that the single modular unit is the size of that square. So, solid layout logic, good.

Like I said, they redesigned The Oregonian,  and the world didn't end. Still, after watching the trajectory of the paper since the changes at the top, I can't say I'm encouraged.

Change doesn't happen in a vacuum. The Oregonian, a paper that once promised everyone who worked at it their jobs for life as long as they continued to do them well, has been hollowing itself out from the inside, as far as I'm concerned. The massive layoffs last year were just an inflection point in a path that began when the paper decided that on Mondays, Opinion would no longer be a separate section, and went through points on the curve that included Jack Ohman's departure for the Sacramento Bee, where he shines just as fiercely and funnily as he ever did here in Oregon, and the recently released news about compensation and performance standards that accentuate posting stories to OregonLive.com over everything else suggest that the West's largest daily is going to a place where I, bluntly, don't think we're going to be well-served from.

It doesn't signify, to me, courage in changing our idea of what a newspaper is and can do so much as it signifies, in the final view, a narrowing of perspective, and a stunting of horizons. Finding itself under too much pressure to aspire to greatness, The Oregonian is willing to settle for chasing clicks on a computer, web impressions on a smartphone.

The Fun-Size O's managment call it a 'digital-first' policy.

That's also the same policy my doctor has for prostate exams. 

[pdx_media] The Ohmanless Oregonian

2883.This shouldn't have happened on Bob Ross's 70th birthday, man. Just isn't fair. One of the best things at The Oregonian isn't there anymore, starting today.

Jack Ohman … a personal hero of mine, and one of the reasons that The Big O's editorial page was still a must-visit for us, is no longer there. This, from the pape, today:

The Oregonian's prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman has decided to leave the paper. Ohman, who had worked at the paper for nearly 30 years, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize this year.

The message, with the warm byline of simply The Oregonian, was only about four mere paragraphs. So much for an award-winning cartoonist who was nominated for the Pulitzer last year, and with the OR-7 For President campaign, was at the top of a very cool form. Seems a bit wan and un-sincere. Jack, who says (and we believe him) that he will remain an avid reader of the paper, is gracious and well spoken in his announcement.

Also, the article notes that he 'has written and illustrated several books'.  But you're on your own, bunkie. Well, maybe The O can't be bothered to so much as check Wikipedia, but I can:

• Back to the ’80s (1986)
• Drawing Conclusions (1987)
• Fear of Fly Fishing (1988)
• Fishing Bass-ackwards (1991)
• Why Johnny Can't Putt (1993)
• Media Mania (1995)
• Do I Have To Draw You A Picture? (1997)
• Get the Net! (1998)
• An Inconvenient Trout (2008)
• Angler Management (2009)
• Illustrator, Blowing Smoke: The Wild and Whimsical World of Cigars (1997), Brian McConnachie, author

I particularly recommend Back to the 80's, which I still find incredibly humorous, having survived them and all.

Word is he's going to be releasing something about his future plans on Wednesday. Bated breath here at Haus ZehnKatzen.

[teh funnay] Maybe They Should Put Better Screens In The Childrens Hospital Windows

2854.There does seem to have been an disturbing amount of kids falling from windows in Portland these days. Never fear, though, The Oregonian is on the case, even if the advice is oddly limited:

Original story here

The first tip I'd have might probably have myself would be to keep your kids away from the windows at Randall Children's Hospital.

On the other had, if a kid had to fall from a window, I'd want it to be there, what with the doctors close at hand and all.

[print] Can A Non-Daily Print Newspaper Be A Paper Of Record?

2828.File this under the rubric The Death Of Print.

The news broke today, via Poynter, that the daily newspaper of Louisiana's largest city, the Times-Picayune, will be cutting back to a three-day-per-week publishing schedule, and doubling down on its online presence and digital media efforts:

Times-Picayune publisher Ashton Phelps Jr. has confirmed that the newspaper will cease daily publication, moving to three days a week in the fall: Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. He also confirmed staff cuts, though he didn’t say how large they will be. The New York Times’ David Carr reported Wednesday night that the paper likely would cease daily publication and that the two managing editors would leave.
This would make New Orleans the largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper. The Times-Picayune, with a circulation of about 155,000 on Sundays and 134,000 weekdays, would be the largest paper in the U.S. to shift to non-daily publication. Its circulation in March 2005, before Hurricane Katrina flooded the city and shrank the city’s population: about 285,000 on Sundays and 257,000 weekdays.

To give some conception of how that compares, the Times-Picayune (serving a city of about 350,000 in the 46th largest metropolitan area in the US) is just about to adopt a similar publishing schedule to the News-Register in McMinnville (population about 35,000, less than one-tenth the size). Picayune, indeed … Times? Not so much.

Not only does this not bode will for print communications, nor does it contain good news for those who don't care to be required to be wired in order to stay informed, this carries implications for the paper's status as New Orelans' 'paper of record'.

There are two ways to interpret that term. A de jure, everyday way to look at it is that it's the paper everyone turns to to record the everyday history of the area. That is the function filled by the major daily papers in every city, which become the written record of the daily history of the area. In Portland this, of course, would be The Oregonian. 


The more formal de facto definition of a newspaper of record is the newspaper in which public records - births, deaths, legal dealings, etc - can be expected to be found. And this has put the T-P in a certain awkward spot.

Reacting to the announcement that The Times-Picayune will be moving from publishing a daily print version to three days a week in print while expanding its online product, Sens. J.P. Morrell and Edwin Murray, both D-New Orleans, said that a state law dealing with its status as the legal journal for state and local government entities in the New Orleans area will change.Murray said by state law legal notices -- such as council meeting minutes, meeting notices, court proceedings, foreclosures, successions, local bills and others -- have to be advertised in the "official journal" and in New Orleans that has been the daily newspaper.

This law will have to be changed plenty-quick or the paper could open itself to legal challenges, the article (amusingly, on the T-P's website Nola.com) notes. This website is mounted by Adavance Publications which, and we'll try not to worry here, also owns The Oregonian. Which has also reduced staff over the past few years.

It can happen, I suppose. After 174 years, The Ann Arbor News, the daily newspaper in the Michigan city (and thus the paper of record under our first definition) ended daily publication entirely back in 2009, replaced by a website. This digital media company has a twice-weekly print version, and is owned by a company who's owned by Advance Publications, who also owns The Oregonian.


Once again, we'll try not to worry.

But you'd better get yourself an iPad, Gramps, it's startin' to look like.

[bloggage] Hat Tip To Jeff Mapes

1151. If you surfed over here to see the large size of the Sleepy Downtown Salem (Liberty Street) that Jeff Mapes referred to in his blog here, you can see that here.

And thanks for coming over, if you did – and thank you, Jeff, for the mention! Most skookum of you!

Tags: pdx, bloggage, linkage, or_photo, Oregon photos, Salem Photos, Downtown Salem