Some of the changes have been liked, others haven’t. But I know a lot of folks are asking themselves, “What’s going on down there at Washington and Pine?”
Fair question.
What you’re seeing are some growing pains as we implement a entirely new computer software system and incorporate new hardware technology in our news department, the first “overhaul” of our news operation’s computer resources in 15 years.
The Herald’s parent company, Triple Crown Media, has made a considerable investment in our news operation, well over $200,000. That’s especially meaningful when you consider that this particular investment in Albany and Southwest Georgia is coming in a year when the economy is tanking.
Our publisher, Mike Gebhart, summed it up pretty well when he said, “This is a substantial investment in Albany and Southwest Georgia’s best news organization. I’m happy we were able to make this happen for our
readers’ benefit.”
With any big changes, there are glitches ... and we’ve had several, particularly in Wednesday’s paper. I appreciate the calls and e-mails from readers, and I certainly appreciate the
patience and understanding that the majority has been kind enough to extend to us while we try to make this system conversion and publish a daily newspaper at the same time.
One of the complicating factors is moving to a new design system utilized on PCs from an older one that was designed for Macs. Among other things, it required us to re-examine the fonts we had been using, which had been designed only for Mac use.
After doing quite a bit of research, we chose the Miller family of typefaces for our body copy and the Benton family for normal headlines. Both are rated highly for readability, and we believe they will be a distinct improvement once we finish making some tweaks to our style rules.
Another benefit that you should be seeing in coming months will be more interaction between the daily newspaper and our Web site, which will also be upgraded. With our old computer system, quite honestly, that interaction has been difficult and often frustrating, both to us and to Web viewers. There’s just no good way to make the Internet and a computer system that was created before there was an Internet compatible.
Meanwhile, I realize that change isn’t always easy to accept. That’s understandable. I hope you’ll keep an open mind as we implement these. What we are trying to do here is one thing and one thing only — give you a better newspaper.
And it is your newspaper. I’m always interested in what you think — good, bad or uncommitted. Feel free to call, write or e-mail.
After all, freedom of speech is what it’s
all about.
