Fresh Loaf

Tomorrow’s a big day for the AJC, which is launching its much-vaunted redesign with Tuesday’s print edition. An editor who sat on a redesign committee told me the paper would look more “featury,” with color-coded sections, smaller photos, lots of front-page headlines and fewer graphics (which is good, seeing as the AJC laid off its graphics department).

Using smaller photos seems somewhat counterintuitive if your aim to grab readers’ attention — which, at the struggling daily, is very much the aim — but I’m told that virtually every element of the redesign is the product of exhaustive focus-group research. Apparently, readers also said they wanted more headlines on the front page, even if most of those stories jumped to an inside page. This is the antithesis of the famous USA Today design model, which mandates that only the lead story can jump. As you can see from the mock-up above, stories will also be set off by colored boxes.

If you want a closer look at some of the changes, visit the AJC’s marketing website. If you’re a graphics obsessive, check out this blog, which walks you through the various stages in the redesign process. If you’d like to have a top editor explain why you’re going to love the redesign, read the AJC management blog. If you yearn to read a veteran Atlanta journalist’s scathing criticism of the AJC’s efforts to boost readership with bright colors, go here. Or you can simply wait for tomorrow’s paper to land on your doorstep.

To some of the lower-tier editors, however, the redesign seems poorly timed, coming just a week after the most sweeping newsroom reshuffling in memory. Half the staff is just starting to figure out how to do an unfamiliar job and now they’re going to have to deal with an overhauled print design as well.

On the other hand, the sense of urgency is understandable. Over the weekend, the Audit Bureau of Circulations released its latest figures and the AJC has again been singled out for poor performance. Among the top 25 dailies, the AJC’s 20-percent plunge in daily circulation was second only to the The New York Post, which fell by 20.5 points. Sunday circulation at the AJC suffered a 7-percent drop, which was better than most.

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From USA Today:

In a city where Coca Cola, United Parcel Service and Home Depot are the titans of industry, there are new powerful forces on the block: Mexican drug cartels.

Their presence and ruthless tactics are largely unknown to most here. Yet, of the 195 U.S. cities where Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are operating, federal law enforcement officials say Atlanta has emerged as the new gateway to the troubled Southwest border.

Rival drug cartels, the same violent groups warring in Mexico for control of routes to lucrative U.S. markets, have established Atlanta as the principal distribution center for the entire eastern U.S., according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center.

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One day after USA Today TV Critic Robert Bianco called “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne” not only the worst sitcom of the year, but “one of the worst of the modern era,” the show debuted on TBS Wednesday to the largest audience for a sitcom in the history of basic cable. The show is filmed at Tyler Perry Studio on Krog Street in Inman Park.

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