With the announcement last week of a new publisher for The Bee, I thought this would be a good time to talk about various changes that are happening or will soon occur at the paper and on its Web site.
Judging from reader feedback, many of you aren’t aware of the changes, though some of them were publicized in editors’ notes in the paper.
People lead busy lives, though, and can’t be expected to keep up with changes in their paper that seem modest individually but when taken together, change the face and feel of The Bee.
In case you missed it, Publisher Janis Heaphy is retiring after leading the paper for 10 years. She is leaving for personal reasons, including getting remarried and moving to Sun Valley, Idaho, as well as wanting to spend more time with her son, who will begin college in the fall.
Her successor, Cheryl Dell, takes over April 14. She’s from The Bee’s sister McClatchy Co. newspaper in Tacoma, The News Tribune.
Dell has Central Valley roots: She’s from Modesto and was born in Oakdale. She and her husband are Sacramento State graduates, and she has family in the area. Dell also worked at the Bees in Modesto and Fresno.
Readers sometimes confuse the publisher and the editor, thinking they are one and the same.
The publisher holds the highest job at the paper and is ultimately responsible for all parts of it, such as advertising, circulation, news, budgeting and revenue growth.
As the overall leader, the publisher’s duties include keeping the paper profitable and setting overall goals and timetables.
The editor, in this case Melanie Sill, answers to the publisher and is responsible for the news gathering and opinion operations of the paper.
Although The Bee is 151 years old, it never had a publisher before Heaphy. General managers previously ran the business operations.
That’s enough Journalism 101.
There are plenty of other changes afoot.
A little more than a year ago, the paper’s stock listings were significantly reduced. A deluge of complaints descended.
Now The Bee is on the verge of redesigning its stock page, with one substantial difference: It has solicited readers’ opinions.
For several days, the Business section has published a mail-in survey asking readers to rate the usefulness of items now listed, such as stock recaps, stocks of local interest, mutual funds, gainers and losers, commodities, interest rates, foreign exchange rates, etc.
What would you add? readers were asked.
Several hundred have mailed or faxed their responses.
So far, according to Business Editor Cathie Anderson, there’s little interest in continuing stocks of local interest as a separate listing or coverage of metals and commodities markets. What people want more of are listings of mutual funds and individual stocks.
Anderson said after the results are compiled (the deadline was last Friday), she will meet with senior editors and they will decide what to do.
She expects to write about the results and what may happen next in this upcoming Saturday’s Business section.
“I learned a lot from (last year’s) decision,” Anderson said. “It really is important to give readers a voice … and hope we make (better decisions) based on their input.”
And speaking of giving readers more of a role, the Scene section is trying out four new comic strips over the next 12 weeks and asking readers for feedback.
The 12 weeks coincides with the hiatus of “Doonesbury,” whose creator, Garry Trudeau, is taking some time off. Many readers missed the notice and thought The Bee was dropping the popular comic strip.
The new funnies are “Family Tree,” “Tundra,” “Deflocked” and “The Knight Life,” and will be rotated through in three-week cycles until June 14. Doonesbury returns June 16.
During the trials, readers can comment on their favorites by going to www.sacbee.com/fun.
Meanwhile, the paper’s new twice-weekly auto section, now called Drive, debuted last week.
Unlike the previous auto section produced by the newsroom, Drive is purely an advertorial product put out by The Bee’s advertising department.
Because of that, there will be no news in it from organizations such as the Associated Press, the Detroit Free Press or the Los Angeles Times, who won’t allow their editorial content to be used in advertorial products.
Some parts of the old auto section were retained, such as the Click & Clack column.
The Bee went the advertorial route to free up resources in the Business section, which is short-staffed.
And as of today, the back-page, Sunday-only A-section feature called “Back Talk” is no more.
Touted as “A Not-So-Ordinary Look At People, Places & Things,” the long package of off-beat items simply ran out of gas, the effort-intensive endeavor falling on fewer people to produce.
I was not a big fan, and neither were some readers.
As I said before, at its best, “Back Talk” was smart and irreverent. At its worst, it was lighter than a helium balloon.
May it rest in peace.
Meanwhile, other changes and additions are coming the next several weeks and months. Here are a few:
• A wine Web site focused on the many wineries in the Sacramento region, such as those in Amador and El Dorado counties.
• A new online searchable database of those arrested in Sacramento County, set to launch today.
• A redesign of the paper to coincide with a change to a narrower page width.
• A redesign of sacbee.com that also will improve how it works.
• A new column in Business geared toward helping consumers decide how to invest their money.
As you see, there is a lot going on, with more on the horizon. Stay tuned. It should be interesting.
