Our new look

We made some changes to today’s Mountain Democrat. In our efforts to make the newspaper easier to read we changed the size of our body copy and made headlines a tad larger.

But perhaps a bit more noticeably is the way the newspaper is organized. Readers will now find obituaries and other relevant news items on page 2. Formerly called Logbook and appearing adjacent to the Opinion page, this page is now called Essentials and will have weather, lake levels, the crime log, building permits and other data of general interest.

We’ve replaced the former Logbook page with a full page dedicated to Letters to the Editor. The Mountain Democrat receives hundreds of letters. All qualified letters are posted online and we make every effort to publish them in the printed edition. This change should help in that regard. Readers may also find reading the letters a bit easier since we changed the width of the columns on the page.

What about Bob? Bob Billingsley’s popular column Heard Over the Back Fence will now be featured on the front page of the B section. This section is now called News, Etc. and will feature a variety of local news, including features of everyday life, arts, events and activities. Readers prospecting for entertaining venues and weekend happenings can check out Friday’s edition. The calendar of events for the weekend will be organized by the day. Pick a day and see what your choices are for “Things to do.”

Who do you write to when you want to tell a legislator your opinion or petition our government? Addresses of legislators will anchor the bottom of the Opinion page.

Another change we hope makes it easier on readers will be dedicating a full page near the back of the A section for story jumps. News stories sometimes run long and when this occurs it necessitates jumping to another page. Locating these “jumps” mainly to one page should help.

We’re excited by the new look. Some of the reorganization concepts break new ground for newspapers. Our readers can count on us to be consistent yet innovative and just a little bit daring. The bottom line is we think you will be pleased with the changes today and of those yet to come.