February 07, 2008
I’ll say this about the name “New Jersey Jewish News”: Read those four words, and you know exactly what you’re getting. Eat your hearts out, Navistar, Altria, and Accenture!
So I’ll admit that our new front page logo, the bold (and beautiful) “NJJN” that signals our first major redesign in over five years, deserves some explaining. In our efforts to deliver readers a fresher, cleaner, and friendlier newspaper, we first took a long hard look at our logo. We felt the initials made a strong graphic statement, and a mission statement as well. We’ve always been delighted that the initials are a palindrome, suggesting our mirror identities as Jews and residents of the Garden State. The new logo proudly incorporates the “NJ,” but we’ve highlighted the second “J” to suggest Judaism’s centrality to our identity, as a newspaper and a community.
Along with the new logo, we’ve incorporated a number of other design changes. The paper itself is 1.5 inches shorter top to bottom — a cost-saving measure, to be sure, but also a move that delivers a pleasing, more compact format that has become an industry standard. The pages are now designed around a four-column template, which we hope you’ll find more pleasing to the eye and which advertisers appreciate for the ability to purchase ad space in what are known as “modular” sizes (and, we hope, plenty of them!).
The new headline typeface, for those keeping track, is Cheltenham, and the section banners like “World” and “Opinion” (the former “Commentary”) are printed in Nofret. Throughout the paper, we hope you’ll notice and enjoy a variety of type changes based on these fonts.
About “Opinion”: This section, which includes the editorial, Editor’s Column, op-eds, and letters to the editor, has been moved farther inside the paper, between the “State & Local” and “World” sections. The intention is to emphasize our commitment first and foremost to local news, which now appears immediately after our popular “hors d’oeuvres” page, Kolbo.
The redesign of the newspaper is matched by a complete overhaul of the NJJN web site, www.njjewishnews.com. The site was re-launched last month with a clean, modern design, new typefaces, and new tools to make the site more navigable. Readers should find it easier to search for archived stories. The home page is relevant to readers across the state, while the five distinct communities we serve are each given a main page with news exclusive to their neighborhoods, schools, and institutions. In the news business, that’s called “hyperlocal” — around the office we call it haimishe.
The web site also includes a link to my new blog, JustASC. Think of the blog as a timely update of the issues and themes that we are covering in the newsprint edition. Between issues, you can find my suggestions for breaking stories and media items elsewhere on the Web, commentary on Jewish politics and culture, and the occasional humor piece. Most of all, the blog is a chance for readers to join the conversation by commenting on my posts and debating with me and other readers. That’s why I call it a “multilog” — a dialogue with many voices.
All of these changes, brought about by the hard work of a talented production, editorial, and sales team, are part of a long-term planning process at NJJN. The newspaper world, like the Jewish community, is being buffeted by tremendous demographic, economic, and social pressures. In both worlds, habits of another century are giving way to diverse expressions and new commitments. Newspapers are aiming to hold on to mature readers and entice new ones just as Jewish institutions are trying to please older constituencies and battle a worrying trend toward disaffiliation.
The redesign that begins today is part of an effort to embrace the time-honored Jewish commitment to “tradition and change.” We know Judaism, like journalism, has a message that remains vital, even indispensable, in an era of fractured identities and short attention spans. That message is as fresh today as it ever was, and its messengers should reflect that.
As a 61-year old community institution, we still believe in every word of our name. “Jersey” is our home, “Jewish” is our heart, and “News” is what we do. With the launch of a redesigned NJJN, we hope you’ll join us in embracing the “New.”