Scott Swanson
If you got the feeling, as you opened your newspaper this week, that it is a little smaller than last week, you’re correct.
This is the latest chapter in the 90-plus-year history of The New Era, in which a lot of recent adjustments have been forced upon us by circumstances beyond our immediate control.
Faithful readers will likely recall how, last summer, we had to find a new printer after the Albany-based firm that had printed The New Era for many years announced it was not going to print newspapers any more. The resulting scramble (by a number of local newspapers) to find a new printer left us with a best option of the Herald and News newspaper in Klamath Falls. They’ve printed us since July, and it’s been a process as we’ve worked out some bugs.
One of the those has been the size of The New Era. The H&R told us up front that they might have some challenges printing the size newspaper we have been publishing since 2008, when we switched from the traditional, larger “folio” page size to the “tall tab” you’ve been reading since then.
The H&R’s presses are set up to print a slightly smaller “short tab” size page, which is what you’re looking at now. But since we bind each year’s newspapers each year for archival purposes (and use them frequently), it was difficult to make a switch mid-year.
As regular readers have likely noticed, we’ve had challenges with print quality and it hasn’t been fun. Now that we’re in the new year, we’re making that switch, which will mean smaller pages and, at times, thicker newspapers when advertising or the volume of local news (which are the primary factors that determine how thick your newspaper is each week) warrant it.
So, we’re optimistic. I’m hopeful that the print quality will improve because the Creswell Chronicle, also a weekly, which made the switch with us last July, went to the smaller size immediately and their pages have been noticeably cleaner than ours.
We definitely will do everything we can to improve the quality because we don’t like it any more than you do – actually, we’re probably more unhappy since our staff puts significant effort into producing that news and those photos and advertisements.
You may also notice a few other tweaks. We’ve made some changes that we think will brighten up the front page and make it more user-friendly. You may notice, as well, that we’ve simplified the weather box on page 3, and added a little cartoon that we’ve considered using in the past and decided, this year, to commit to running regularly.
Our goal has always been, and continues to be, to serve you with a quality local newspaper.