Stanley: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel print changes reflect an evolving industry

What are the most valuable news stories we can offer you?

How can we be of greatest service to our community?

We keep asking these questions as technological innovation transforms the news industry.

We must evolve as folks spend more time with smartphones and less with ink on paper.

We are telling more stories with videos, podcasts, interactive graphics. We are using social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter to listen as well as share our work. We are building smartphone apps, sending mobile alerts and emailing newsletters.  And the space we have to tell stories in print is getting smaller.

CHAT MONDAY:  Journal Sentinel editors talk to readers at 11 a.m.

CHUCK MELVIN:  Changes in our Business section

DAVID D. HAYNES:  Changes in our Opinions section

Where do we need to focus more of our resources and attention? What do we have to give up in order to do that?

Changes in today's paper reflect the most recent choices we've had to make:

• Our Sunday Fresh and Comics sections have been combined, with Fresh in front and Comics in back. Our weekly “At Home” decorating feature will now appear every other Sunday, alternating with the "Fresh Ideas" column of home improvement tips. We've kept all the puzzles but cut four comics.
• Our Sunday Business and Crossroads sections have been combined, with Business in front and Crossroads in back. We've reduced stock listings primarily to those of local interest, recognizing the Sunday paper isn't the first place people go for stock prices from Friday. Death notices remain behind Business.
• On the positive side, Parade magazine will return to the Journal Sentinel next Sunday after a long absence.

You’ll also see print edition changes during the week. Business News will appear in the A section behind local, national and world news, remaining a stand-alone section on Wednesdays.

A full editorial page will appear on Wednesdays, with just letters from readers running on other days of the week.

Our commentary team will be building a lively online forum for opinions and debate including a broad range of Wisconsin voices. It will host a series of “Across the Divide” community events that bring together people of different political stripes to share ideas on pressing issues. We aim to meet a critical need by providing a safe and civil forum for political discourse.

Changes to the printed newspaper are unsettling to us as well as our readers. We make them reluctantly to keep the costs of print and delivery in line with print revenue.

In addition to listening to you through direct communication and social networks, we can see what readers spend the most time with on digital and mobile platforms. Our most engaging efforts, according to these measures, are in-depth investigative and explanatory reports; sports analysis; stories about interesting people doing inspiring things; expansive coverage of major breaking news events.

We have not cut any of these areas. In fact, we will give them greater attention in the future. We believe there has never been a greater need for independent reporting that follows the evidence wherever it leads.

Examples of our most read and shared stories include these recent major investigations:

Landlord Games: We exposed how slumlords have ignored paying fines and property taxes while continuing to buy more houses each week at auctions in the County Courthouse basement. In response, city officials finally have taken the first steps to stop these practices, which harm tenants, neighborhoods and property values.

The Price of Being Wrong: We discovered that babies in Wisconsin and other states have suffered devastating strokes and permanent disabilities because newborn screening labs are free to ignore scientific advances and even common sense.

Oil and Water:  As environmental protests have stalled new pipelines on the Great Plains, oil has continued to flow down a path of least resistance through aging pipelines across Wisconsin and even along the bottom of the Great Lakes.

Burned: Unsafe hazardous waste management continues in barrel recycling plants, despite injuries and deaths, posing risks to workers, neighbors, firefighters and the environment.

Thanks to video, interactive databases and other advances, we can tell these stories with more depth and impact than in the past with print alone. Print subscribers have free access to all our digital offerings by logging in on JSOnline.com.

On a daily basis, a sampling of recent items that were most read and shared would include:

• Our story on how Greg Gard depends on his faith and the example of his hard-working father, a farmer, who died shortly before Gard became head basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin.
• Our coverage of local bicycling legend Chris Kegel, who died after a battle with cancer but not before spreading his joy to thousands of friends.
• Our profile of Kelli Thompson, a governor’s daughter who didn’t want to go near a courtroom yet ended up becoming a career public defender.
• Jim Stingl’s very timely column about Don Herman, who retrieves vehicles that break through the ice.

It may be bad timing to ask at a time when we are making trims to the printed paper, but the truth is we need support from subscribers more than ever before to continue doing the in-depth reporting in Wisconsin that you can trust, that matters most and that you can’t get anywhere else. If you are a loyal reader, please consider buying a gift subscription for a friend or family member who does not subscribe now.

My own subscription habit started when my parents gave me a mail subscription to our hometown Green Bay Press-Gazette after I headed off to college. Now we offer digital-only subscriptions and Sunday print subscriptions with full digital access, as well as traditional seven-day print delivery with online.

Let me know what you value most, including coverage you wish we provided but don’t. Reader requests brought the Green Sheet back to our daily edition two years ago — many of you told me the paper had become too serious and you missed the daily joys that the Green Sheet had provided.

Feel free to email your suggestions. We’ll also do a live chat with readers 11 a.m. Monday at JSOnline.com. I’ll answer your questions and listen to your suggestions along with editorial page editor David D. Haynes, features and entertainment editor Jill Williams and business editor Chuck Melvin.

Please help us make sound choices about what to devote more attention to in the future. Thank you so much for your support.

George Stanley is editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He can be reached via email at george.stanley@jrn.com, followed on Facebook @MJSEditorGeorgeStanley and on Twitter @geostanley