Last Updated: August 18, 2000
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Capturing the culture of technology in Austin
By Melissa Segrest
We call it Technopolis.
Last fall, we launched this new weekly broadsheet section (and revamped
an existing business section) to better cover the explosion of high-tech
businesses in Austin. The residents of our city are extremely tech savvy.
Austin is the second most-wired city in America, and has been proclaimed
the country’s hottest city to do business in by several national magazines.
We created a task force of approximately 25 staffers from throughout
the newspaper — editorial, circulation, marketing and advertising — and
worked for several months to develop proposals and prototypes. Our goal
was to create a unique section that attempted to deconstruct for readers
Austin’s burgeoning culture of technology, not just the gadgets or the
business stories, but about the way the new technologies are changing people’s
lives.
Launched in mid-October, Technopolis — the name a blend of technology
and metropolis — is published on Fridays.
It is a departure from the traditional “personal technology” section.
We think of it as a “tech culture” section. In essence, it is a lifestyle
section about the technology that is so much a part of life in Austin.
It’s not just about the thousands of people who work in the tech industries
in Austin, but also about the technology available and of interest to the
general population. Primarily, we try to look at how the explosion of technology
is changing the way we live. It’s part consumer news, part tech people
news, part tech culture. It’s a lively mix of gadgets, games, geeks and
trends. It has a distinctive design that sets it apart from the rest of
the newspaper, and it has a distinctive personality as well.
The section has been very well received by readers, and follow-up focus
groups gave it high marks. It’s still a work in progress, because it is
such a unique type of section. Our goal is to reflect the way technology
is changing Austin and Austinites, but to do it in a surprising and readable
way.
The other component of our changed content is the reinvention of an
existing Monday business section, called Tech Monday. That section was
created 5 years ago, when the tech industry in Austin began to grow. But
it was time for an overhaul, so we revamped the design, expanded the section,
added lots of new standing features and attacked more meaty, topical subjects
in our cover stories.
In all, we added eight positions in the newsroom for the launch of Technopolis
and the revamped Tech Monday. That’s no small committment of resources
for a newspaper our size. But we felt that in order to stay on top of this
booming aspect of life here, we had to make a very visible, strong statement
about the importance of tech in our town.
Segrest is assistant managing editor for features & special projects
for the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman.
