Fun pages that keep readers coming back

By Bill Dunn

When editors and staffers at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis create new features and destinations for readers, the emphasis is on improving the reader’s experience and connecting with their lives. It is a deeply rooted belief that if we can provide readers with content that can enrich their lives, expand their experiences and supply news that relates to how they live, the readers will be back more frequently and will begin to anticipate these features.

Star Tribune staffers have created some fun destinations for readers in FreeTime (entertainment tab), Taste (food section) and Sports.

FreeTime: Improved movie information on the “Big Picture” pages.

Feeling that movie buffs among our readers were being underserved, we created the “Big Picture” pages as a compendium of gossip, fun graphics, interactive elements, reviews of movie trailers and Web sites and minifeatures. Some of these elements had been “shoe-horned” into other parts of the paper before, but most of the content is new.

‘The Big Picture” includes the latest news and views from the film world (mainstream and arthouse), but usually is centered on graphic-oriented, humorous features, many of which have been expanded into multimedia displays on our Web site. Several movie buffs on our staff brainstorm the page each week, and the fun they have producing it is reflected in the content and reader response.

Taste: Something delicious is always cooking on the “Front Burner,” a page designed for both intensive food readers and the casual cook looking for a quick way to improve their food experience.

It features a standing column of food events and cooking demonstrations in the Twin Cities area. The “On The Shelf” feature is a visual experience of gadgets, cooking items and quirky kitchen products. Local outlets are listed to help consumers find the items. And staff humorist/food writer Al Sicherman offers up a weekly column of advice, product information and whimsy to amuse even the sourest cook. Plus there is a “Food News in Review” column that features summaries of news reports published in the paper in the last week.

Readers love it. Focus groups and unsolicited mail from readers ail give “Front Burner” high marks.

Sports: The paper has added several new pages to its sports section in the past two years. Again, the goal is to go beyond the usual game coverage and get readers closer to the stories.

Each Friday the section is called Sports Weekend. Its mission is to prepare readers for major events. Major centerpieces are planned for the cover, and an inside page called “Weekend Ticket” serves as a guide for the sports weekend for couch potatoes, spectators and participatory athletes. The section also includes a golf page (Tee Time), a motor sports page (Pit Row), a recreational sports page (Your Sports) and college football and basketball pages.

Each Monday, the section is called “Sports Replay.” It is driven by the news and results from Sunday and the weekend. It includes expanded space for Scoreboard results and a color back page called The Wrap that recaps the weekend in sports in a clever, sometimes irreverent style. During the football season, we devote a second cover called Vikings Replay to the Vikings game, and an entire page inside wrapping up the college football weekend.

The key to the pages in each of the sections mentioned above is intense planning and commitment to visual storytelling. The staffers involved have a lot of fun brainstorming the pages and coming up with visual elements that hook the readers immediately. More than ever, we realize that readers see the pages before they determine if they will read the pages.

Dunn is assistant managing editor for visuals at the Star Tribune.