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Making waves…

By Tom Chambers • 12:12 a.m. March 4, 2005 • 5 Comments • 0 Trackbacks

As I mentioned two posts ago, there’s some exciting stuff happening at The Coast News. In fact, by the end of this month, it’s not going to be The Coast News but the Coast News Group.

That’s right, not only are we running circles around the three mediocre dailies (1, 2, 3) with our coverage in Oceanside, we’re expanding — adding two new newspapers: the Rancho Santa Fe News and the Village & Valley News (covering Del Mar and Carmel Valley). If you’re from the San Diego area, look for them on March 31.

What’s more, around the same time, The Coast News will undergo some cosmetic surgery — well, a lot of cosmetic surgery. We’re revamping the paper from the top down — changing the look, adding special pages and expanding coverage. It’s very exciting. Watch for a revamped Web site in the next couple of months as well.

As if that’s not enough, this week we moved our publication date fromCoast News March 4 Thursday of each week to Friday — so we can include the Wednesday night council meetings in that week’s issue of the paper (not that we needed to do that to beat the competition — especially in Oceanside — but the Thursday publication has bitten us a couple of times).

All of that said, I’m going to start posting images of Coast News pages here, so you can follow along. Revamping and spicing up a newspaper is an adventure with as many risks and pitfalls as successes and mountain peaks. I’ll blog about it, so all you journalists out there can learn from it as we go along, laugh at me and give some feedback. Let’s go for a ride. Here’s the March 4 front page (which I think looks pretty good) in Coast News Classic. (should we call the new look Coast News X? R? IV?)

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5 comments

Matt at 11:35 p.m. March 4, 2005:

I look forward to a new website. I am not a big fan of the current version. Also, what a great front page. I have some questions about front page layout, we shall talk.

Stephen at 11:20 a.m. March 5, 2005:

As bad as the Web site for The Coast News, it’s still a hell of a lot better than whatever junk Today’s Local News has. I mean, we’re a few people in an orange building in Leucadia. The Copley folks can’t shell out a few dollars for a dedicated IT staff? Honestly, I don’t know what big newspapers spend their money on.

Matt at 3:41 p.m. March 5, 2005:

I wouldn’t even call that a web site. I think you are expecting too much Stephen. Take one look at their paper and that makes their website looks amazing. ;-)

Stephen at 2:37 a.m. March 6, 2005:

I actually look at the paper regularly (I have to steal it from driveways in the houses by my apartment since there’s no other way to get it that I know of). I think it has the potential to be good. I really like its visual design and a lot of the art.

And it’s funded by a big company that can afford to throw some money around. Not sure why the Web site is so pathetic.

Matt at 11:14 a.m. March 6, 2005:

You can have my copy Stephen. It just sits in our driveway until a couple in a beat-up Ford Focus drives through every few days and picks up the entire neighborhoods. I read it nearly everyday when it first came out, but when the writing didn’t improve, i stopped picking it up.

By the way, Tom, have you guys should considered adding a sports section?

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