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Temple: A new Rocky premieres Tuesday

Published January 20, 2007 at midnight

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Get ready, Colorado.

There's a new Rocky Mountain News coming.

This day has been in the works for a long time. Years. It's taken the efforts of hundreds of people. At our printing facility. In our computer rooms. And of course in our newsroom.

And now it's almost here. On Tuesday you'll be seeing a new, even more convenient size Rocky. It's a newspaper for the 21st century.

We've always been a paper that fits comfortably into people's lives. But as times have changed, as life in Colorado has changed, so always has the Rocky.

We must continue to evolve. Why? Because we want to retain our role as a valued and trusted source on the life of this community, as the place where people talk about what's important, and as a useful tool to live a better life.

In the 21st century, that means doing everything to put the reader first. No, that doesn't mean that you will be happy with every article or agree with every decision we make in the new Rocky. But it does mean that we're not just changing the look of the paper; we're changing the way we work to put the focus where it counts: on serving you.

The most visible change will be that the new page is almost 20 percent smaller than our current weekday size. But the most important change should be the quality of your reading experience. Frankly, this has been an evolutionary process. We've been working to introduce improvements - such as not asking you to flip 20 pages to read the continuation of a story - since the fall. We've added new approaches to storytelling, such as "First person" and "Five questions."

And we've expanded on the Web, for example with an enhanced weather service for the latest information on Colorado, the nation and world.

This process picked up steam in August, after we moved into our new headquarters. We established eight staff teams to explore topics important to the future of the newspaper and make recommendations on how we could do our job better. About 50 people from across the paper worked with consultant Roger Black and the core redesign team: Design Director Kathy Bogan, Presentation Director Randall Roberts, Graphics Editor Charles Chamberlin, Style Editor Lesley Kennedy, Assistant Design Director Brian Clark and Assistant Interactive Editor Jessica Slater.

Meanwhile, we studied typographical and other issues related to the capabilities of the new printing presses installed as part of a $130 million renovation of our production facility.

We printed test copies and revised and printed again and revised again. And then we showed the redesign to different groups of readers in focus groups to make sure our ideas were in sync with what they expected from the Rocky. We wanted to be sure they felt comfortable with their new paper.

They did, but they also gave us some advice we took to heart. The result is what you'll see Tuesday - a Rocky more like a magazine. Crisper, sharper, cleaner.

You'll be getting just as much news. (We added column inches to make up for the smaller page.)

These changes were made possible by the decision to consolidate our printing operation in one plant, using the new, industry standard smaller page sizes, which of course will result in real financial savings. That's a benefit that will strengthen the papers. But the presses also will be an improvement for readers and advertisers.

The last major step we took like this was in 2002, when we introduced a new publishing system. It feels like decades ago.

So much has changed since then. Broadband was still fairly rare in homes. Myspace didn't exist. Neither did YouTube.

On Tuesday you'll see a paper edited for this new era. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

John Temple can be reached at or by mail at 101 W. Colfax, Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202.