Adapting to new format, news cycle

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Changes to your newspaper since the start of this month have been significant and we hope it has  been a good experience for most of you.

Behind the physical changes you see — such as new fonts and colour on all pages — there has been a big shift for our journalists as we now publish on a different news cycle, with each day’s paper printed the evening before rather than at midday.

For people who are passionate about sharing the latest news this was a big downside of the move to printing The Gisborne Herald in Auckland; almost as sad as ending a 149-year tradition of printing a newspaper in Gisborne.

It is, however, the same news cycle almost all other newspapers in the country shifted to many years ago.

In a challenging media and business environment we had to make some difficult decisions. Becoming a Tuesday-Saturday newspaper, receiving national and world news pages from our partner NZME and increasing the cover price of the paper were also needed to help secure a sustainable future for our company.

Most importantly, The Gisborne Herald is still very much produced here in Tairāwhiti Gisborne by our team of 20 journalists, three designers and five advertising representatives — along with many other local staff.

The heart of our business is connecting people across Tairāwhiti and being a trusted source of local news and information. We’re committed to maintaining both a  high-quality print publication and a strong online presence — where our digital and newspaper subscribers can always go for the latest news that matters in Tairāwhiti.

The major changes we announced at the end of last month received a lot of attention and we appreciate the kind messages we received at a challenging time.  We have also had a lot of feedback about the new format and have really appreciated this too, both the negative and the positive.

The most consistent negative message we got early on was that the new Stag text fonts we adopted, to align with supplied national and world pages, were more difficult for some people to read. In response we have enlarged them as much as we can, including an adjustment to fill the entire printable area on each page. We have also spaced the letters slightly.

Some of you were missing the horoscope and Lotto results so they have returned as of this week.

Along with full colour, the most positive feedback has been about the new double-page puzzle spread — so hats off to The Puzzle Company, a husband-and-wife team in Tauranga.

Like some of you, we’re also settling into the new format and some new ways of doing things — while continuing to keep you up to date with the news of Tairāwhiti and elsewhere.