Robb Montgomery

It takes guts, imagination and a real investment to come up with something new. How many newspaper redesigns do we see that become instantly dated because the wheels of innovation stopped spinning once the new design ‘launched?’ True innovators don’t stop reinventing.
Make your paper work better not just look better
It’s been an accepted practice at many U.S. papers to try and modernize and market their product with a periodic redesign. It makes good business sense to make swift improvements to a product and demonstrate to consumers that their loyalty is being rewarded. But newspapers have traditionally been so hidebound and change-averse that they typically wait eight or ten years to make major improvements in their products. And they often introduce dozens of changes on the same day and disorient their loyal customers.
Imaginations are like muscles — you either use them or lose them
Exhibit A for proof of a better process lies with The Guardian of London. The Guardian in the last year have transformed themselves into the top newspaper and Web site in the U.K. and Carolyn McCall, Chief Executive of Guardian Newspapers, says that making innovation a core business principle for their company led the way. They changed everything but their values and are reaping the benefits.
Looking for quick fixes
Redesigns are often being pitched as a cure for drooping circulation. Some think that a shiny new design will signal to a modern audience that the paper has caught up their expectations. Disturbingly, it appears that the emphasis is being shifted from measuring the quality of the improvements and making a paper work better for readers to measuring a short-term boost in circulation - a quantitative measure that often has more to do with the marketing and circulation department’s contributions at launch. The mission and purposes of making the paper better with each edition should be the focus of a redesign - not taking credit for a boost in circulation that may or may not be attributed to just the newsroom changes.
The numbers that matter take longer to come in
Churn (the turnover of subscribers) is a big factor in any circulation success story. If a redesign team wishes to be measured principally by circulation gains then it seems premature to declare victory by a momentary spike in interest - at six months and one year publishers will learn if the paper is really serving it’s community better.
Redesign - but don’t stop reinventing the culture
A deeper investment and stronger leadership effort is needed to transform a typical newsroom from one that resists change to one that is comfortable perpetually reinventing itself. A redesign can be a catalyst for improvement - but only if the leaders use it wisely and don’t ever stop the innovation process. Newsrooms can make their newspapers relevant again if they first adopt genuine and lasting innovation as a valuable business principle. A tool to use every day and not every once in a while when their circulation audit, advertising survey, or market research demands it.
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