Star-Telegram debuts improvements to print, digital products

The way our readers get their news has changed dramatically over the past few years. As part of the Star-Telegram’s continued evolution, you will see major improvements in our digital and print editions starting today.

We will continue our focus on providing coverage of communities in Tarrant County, but we’re adding more ways to connect with stories on all of our publishing platforms and making it easier to read those stories the way you want to.

You’ll see these changes reflected in an updated design for digital and print that improves navigation, has greater visual impact and features new typefaces designed for McClatchy for optimal readability.

In print, our new design will be more colorful and have more white space to give it a bolder look, but the sections will remain the same and your favorite features will remain anchored in the places you’re already used to.

We’ve changed the front-page design somewhat in response to reader requests to provide a better guide to content throughout the paper. We’ll focus on the major stories of the day, add more photographs and highlight stories in other sections so you won’t miss them.

Because the majority of our online audience comes to us on a mobile device — in most cases a smart phone — we’ve engineered the design changes with that in mind.

Readers told us they want to be engaged and informed by local content that both tells them what’s happening now and draws them deeper into a story, offering them information that empowers them to act.

We have redesigned our responsive web home page to feature the best of our “now” content at the top and our deeper content, including video, in the middle. There’s also a “to do” section, offering the best of our living and entertainment sections, toward the bottom.

We have added a set of scannable highlights, or key points, beneath the headline on most stories. Many stories also feature key quotes and other small bites of information selected by our journalists to help busy readers learn quickly what they need to know.

We’ve also developed a new “layered’’ approach to storytelling that lets you choose the way you want to consume the story, whether you just want to skim the headlines or dive deep and get all the details.

We’re adding more video to our sites and other interactive elements to illustrate details about the story that are better told visually.

To help explain more complex stories, we’re starting a new “In Depth’’ feature online and on Page 5A in print that will examine an important story every day from a number of angles so you can see what the impact is on our community.

We’re increasing our watchdog efforts to keep you informed about business and government, and our award-winning sports and lifestyle coverage will continue to be one of our strengths.

We’re intent on “keeping you connected,” so that’s why we’re making these changes. We’ll be rolling out more improvements to our digital products to give them even greater utility, so watch for that soon.

Before making these changes, we did extensive reader surveys throughout our company’s media markets. We consulted with hundreds of our readers and design experts, asking for feedback on everything from how you get your daily news fix to different configurations of the newspaper.

You can read more about the changes at new.star-telegram.com.

One thing that isn’t changing is our mission to bring you the most relevant news and advertising information about where you live. We’ll continue to cover the stories both big and small and tell how they might affect you.

The Star-Telegram has been around since 1909, so we’re well into our second century of covering Fort Worth and the surrounding area. We’re making these changes to adapt to how our audience wants content delivered today to make sure we’re still here far into the future.

Please let us know what you think about the changes by using our feedback form.

And thanks to all of you for reading the Star-Telegram, no matter how you do it!

This story was originally published September 26, 2015 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Star-Telegram debuts improvements to print, digital products."