So, first impressions of the revamped Bee, anybody? Or do we need a few days to think about it. A few of mine: The narrow page size is “weird”; the color comics every day is great, though it seems like a waste of money; the Top Stories box on the front page is a great addition; the new photos of columnists are a great touch too (wait, that’s Bob Shallit?). I think I can sympathize with the renaming of Metro to Our Region: sometimes you just have to make a change to your product, just for funsies. For example, I think I’ll rename sac-eats. Starting tomorrow, enjoy your snarky food coverage by Tim-tom Happy-pants. Now with double the hyphenation!
My favorite new feature is “Bloggers Weigh In”… Today’s edition is a group of commuters who the Bee asked to “blog for us” about the Big Fix. Now, the Bee has had the blog roundup (“This post has been nominated…etc) for a while in the Forum section. But that made sense since it was actual bloggers allowing their content to be syndicated (nominated) in the paper. This is more like citizens writing short messages addressed to the newspaper, to be printed in a specific section meant for public comment. What a snazzy new Journalism 2.0 concept!
The Sac Rag 
I’ve already expressed my dismay to Tim-tom Happy-pants about the “bloggers weigh in” section, as it really is just a repackaged “man on the street” interview.
It says on the front page that the margin issue will be worked out — they’re wider now than they ultimately will be.
The new font choices are interesting, with some headers in serif and others in sans serif typefaces. (Does our frequent commenter/font guru JLT wish to weigh in on this?)
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just to be crystal clear, by “favorite new feature” I meant “favorite” in the sense of “favorite to make fun of”
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Why not combine the whole paper into just ONE section? WTF do business and local have to do with each other? And does anyone read about “sports” in the paper any more? Heck- if the Bee wants to save on ink (the stated reason for the narrow page- as if ink more expensive than paper?), stop printing dailys and just print one book at the end of the year. But as a lifelong sansserifist (making me pro-serif), I’m pleased to see some recognition of “our little friends.” Ariel font be damned!
Isn’t this the 12th revamp in the last 6 months? When people do that with their shopping lists they are called “crazy OCD” types or similar. Seems like the Bee is flailing about, trying to attract attention- just like a drowning man before he goes under one last time. G’bye Bee…
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The narrow page size is the international standard, so I don’t have a problem with it.
I think some things are VERY weird though.
The headlines are capitalized very oddly – sentence capitalization without punctuation, versus standard head cap. Very odd, and I’ve never seen that in ANY newspaper or magazine before.
They don’t use fi ligatures in the headlines, either, which looks cheap. Look on the front page, right side, halfway down for 2 in the same head; the dot on the i runs right into the ball terminal on the lowercase f.
the new body type is nice, but the headline type is hideous. Just horrible. Spaced way too tightly, too, and obviously not designed for that sort of use.
The biggest problem is they obviously had a non-designer make the new masthead. FAKE SMALL CAPS. Yes, it’s true; look at the width of the big caps vs. the small caps – not the same. Every other newspaper in the world would either have an experienced typesetter AT THE VERY LEAST set this using true small caps; any newspaper that cared about quality would have had the masthead redrawn by someone who knows what they’re doing, like Berkeley’s own Jim Parkinson or another good masthead designer.
So, I just have to wonder – what exactly were they thinking? Why the cavalier attitude toward typography? Too bad to see a paper with a fine tradition of clean type throw it down the drain.
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they’re going broke…
been on a downward spiral for some time, mimicking the state of Sacramento…
writing stinks, columnists now stink, editor stinks…they’ve managed to turn a decent paper into a pile of crap…but then Fargo and Kerridge have managed to screw up and give away millions of the tax payers dollars to con and flimflam artists too…so what’s the diff?
It’s the WaPost, NY or LA Times of SF Gate…the Sac Bee is junk
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It definitely looks better. Good way to disguise the fact that their journalistic content keeps getting worse and worse.
The New Sac Bee, now with color comics! Drool.
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The heads and the sub-heads just look…..odd. I’m glad you designer types are better at expressing this than I am.
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My cousin is named Tim-Tom Happy-Pants.
Please change my name to Joey Joe-Joe Junior Shabadoo.
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Their Flash explanation of the change is quite fanciful. Lots of “newsy” and “newsier.”
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Yikes — the bouncing papers in the online explanation were just a little too much first thing this morning. A better investment would have been to upgrade the sacbee.com site.
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My significant other and I will be getting a divorce over this, since the first one to get the paper hogs the local/business section for twice as long as before, while the other one is left with nothing but colourful comics- and the good ones take all of 30 seconds to read.
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I just can’t stop being negative today, so I’ll agree w/ everyone that the headline fonts/layout look awful. And I dislike the color comics – first, they’re smaller (due to smaller pages), then the color makes them even more difficult to read. I already read a bunch of comics online via the Houston Chronicle (www.chron.com), where you can build your own comics page w/ all the comics you like, then just visit it every day – I think I’ll add the Bee comics I like to that, and stop reading the comics in the Bee entirely.
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I was flipping through the paper and saw what I thought said..Our Religion. I said, “oh shit Dave, the Bee actually has a damned religion section now!”
I was reading an article about a woman who was shot in the foothill (do they mean heal of the foot…that would really do damage to the entire foot)
town of etc., There was a large gap in the story.
I am way impressed with jlt and his assessment. I am going to look at the front page right now.
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Well, I happened to make it thru the first delivery of the very gutted (content wise), newly redesigned Bee, and just couldn’t see myself being a sub. any longer. I redesigned my household budget and narrowed the width of my wallet by cancelling the Sorry Bee!
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And now you have enough money to buy your own name.
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This is awfully picky, but the New York Times crossword now has a wider layout, so it takes up more than the half-page width (as it used to — it was so easy to fold the paper in half across the fold, then lengthwise to do the crossword.) It’s not as ergonomically friendly for me to fold the paper and do the crossword while I’m in a slightly reclined position. Again, this is an overly picky observation.
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