Ernie Brown and Ted Suffolk, right, are pleasant fellows and publisher Betty Jagnow manages a smile here. GM Mark Brown … not so much. (Click for a full view of this photo from last Sunday’s paper.)
The Vindicator‘s new design enjoyed a stunning debut this past week, making good on all the fanfare.
Leveraging the capabilities of a newly refurbished press, the Youngstown-based daily has carried heavy doses of color photos and graphics with far more clarity than Vindy readers have ever seen. Even the daily comics are in color.
The paper looks great. The new, slightly larger body typeface is much easier to digest and the sharp headlines beckon from the orange boxes without hollering like a tabloid.
Even the narrower size, which portends a smaller news hole, has an appeal to it. Outside a few minor goofs that are unavoidable in such launches, the Goss International press that once printed the Los Angeles Times has ”the People’s Paper” looking as crisp as the USA Today or any other U.S. daily.
Along with Vindy.com and the new Neighbors editions, the new press and new look give the locally owned Vindicator Printing Company a huge new opportunity to regain advertisers, hold onto readers and haul in high-end commercial work.
Hopefully, in addition to the meticulous planning required to launch the new press, the paper will work hard to retool its public image as well. That can use some investment.
Scuffling and scowling
On the front of a special section last Sunday, in a huge color photo showcasing the new equipment behind the paper’s management team, nobody could miss the snarling scowls. Unfortunately, that’s the puss the Vindicator wears as an organization at times.
The paper suffered through an eight-month strike in 2004-05, the latest byproduct of many years of strain between the management and employees. Reporters picketed daily downtown. Some started their own newspaper to compete with their employer. Vindy managers, meanwhile, camped inside for days at a time to keep the paper running. It’s not hard to understand why the work environment remains challenging.
While the paper has long claimed financial hardship (a credible story in this market of declining population), employees and Newspaper Guild unionists have scowled over management’s chronic inability to improve the financial look.
The Vindy is no Fast Company, to be sure. Though its capital launched the innovative cBoss Internet years before many Youngstowners used email, the paper itself took forever to get online. Various heroes recruited to reignite ad sales have come and gone. Even the press installation has been a miniboondoggle fraught with delays and legal action.
Good news
Fortunately, the paper has plenty of capacity to redesign its image. Its new editor, Todd Franko, is a newsman and no scowlmeister. Since joining the paper in 2007, he has brought personality to the paper with his affable Sunday column.
Since the impressive new color comes with a premium, some low-budget advertisers still prefer black and white. (This ad ran in Friday’s business section.)
The online edition — still free — has increased the following of popular columnists like Bert deSouza and Ernie Brown, who also play well with the public and know Youngstown through and through. Several writers, editors, photographers and designers have won statewide Associated Press awards lately. And the online polls and comment threads on vindy.com are engaging the online audience, drawing thought leaders, business people and young new readers along with the gadflies.
Keeping with tradition set by its founders, the Vindicator remains heavily involved in community affairs. In addition to its storied Vindicator Spelling Bee, the paper invests quietly in many do-good initiatives, ranging from the Community Improvement Corp. that sparks business activity downtown to the Power of the Pen student writing competition. The much-ballyhooed Youngstown Business Incubator owes its existence to a benevolent building donation from Vindicator Printing.
A happy face
In the past year, Franko has taken on more speaking engagements, which have given the paper more of a happy face. That’s a front-page public relations strategy for the Vindy, which has a big room full of professional storytellers.
Though quiet philanthropy was fine in the day when competition was limited, the paper needs to toot its horn more emphatically now that it’s competing with so many others in town and online for the hearts, minds and budgets of readers and advertisers. Its toughest assignment is to delete the union-management strife before the next round of Guild negotiations.
As reflected last week in the widespread cheers for the paper’s new look, many in Youngstown are pulling for the Vindy. One of America’s few locally owned dailies, it employs more than 250 people, most of them downtown, and has over 300 independent carriers. It’s as much a bedrock Youngstown institution as Youngstown State, the Canfield Fair or the Symphony.
If it’s to avoid being the next Sheet & Tube, Dollar Bank or Butler Wick, it will need stronger bonds with its employees and other neighbors. That’s why a corporate smile has to run daily, above the fold.
