1. What are the 3 main differences between the old weekend edition and the new one?

The Weekend is meant to be a bit more like a weekly magazine and a bit less like the sixth paper of the week.   It's a more planned and edited paper.  It relies more on major story treatments on the various section fronts.  It is more visually-oriented.  It's more heavily integrated with the weekend web package.  It provides more news you can use as a way of emphasizing on the weekend sports, television viewing etc.  And lastly it contains a weekly Globe Essay on an important topic in the news that is reported and has a point of view, but is not an opinion piece.  But, the main difference is operational, not strategic.  It is our attitude toward story selection.  We are trying to be more ambitious and provocative with stories that flow from the news agenda.

2.  What do you mean specifically when you say one of the main objectives of the redesign is “introducing new ideas and perspectives,” any concrete examples of how this translates in the paper? What are the distinct ‘purposes’ of each edition following both relaunches?

The Globe Essay is a major vehicle for including new ideas and perspectives.  In the first week we looked at the foreign policy consensus that seems to have emerged in the U.S. primary race, with particular emphasis on Hilary Clinton's probable foreign policy and we used this to kick off discussion on globeandmail.com.  In the second week we are looking at the emergence of a conservative streak in Quebec vis-à-vis new Canadians, but throughout the paper, we are trying to be more stimulating in our cover story approach in order to provide a more nutritious meal to chew on.  We also have, for a number of years, had a stand alone book section on the weekend.  Now, in addition to reviews, we are promoting a debate (sometimes between author and reviewer) on the ideas emanating from some of the books.

3.  How has the redesign made the paper “more integrated with the Web?

The cover stories in the newsier sections (front of the paper, sports, business and local sections in Toronto and B.C.) lead into a web poll question and a web poll discussion. Some of the material from these discussions may well flow back into the paper.

4. What are the main changes concerning visual design specifically, use of pictures, infographics, color codes and such?

We have provided a palette of vibrant colours to identify each of our nine weekend sections.  We have already been making much more liberal use of infographics and layering since our redesign last April, but the main part of the visual change is to make a bigger bet on the major story of the week in each of these sections, which means a lesser story count and more highly designed pages.

5. What stayed the same?

This was not intended as a major structural change.  We had a very successful weekend issue and didn't have much we wanted to throw out.  That's why it's more of an operational change.  Thus, much of the look and content of the weekend edition remains the same.

6.  What’s the current newsroom and staff structure for the weekday and weekend edition (integrated, separate, mixed on different levels)?

We essentially have four overlapping groups operating within the newsroom: the news group, the business news group, the features group and the web group.  I say overlapping because journalists in the features group often will write front page stories; journalists out of the news group will often write for the weekend feature section and everybody writes for the web, which also has a stand alone core staff.  On a typical weekday, we will have five or six sections.  On the weekend we add a book section, city section, style section, and our broadsheet magazine-like section, Focus.  The weekend Focus section is part of the feature group, which also includes two daily sections covering the arts and lifestyle.

All of these groups are highly integrated and the editors in charge of each group work closely together.

7. In the UK recently (Telegraph and Guardian), the question of integrating both editions has caused the editors of both Sunday editions to resign. Have there been any similar challenges at the Globe & Mail?

We have started from an integrated model.  Our newsroom is extremely integrated both culturally and interpersonally, so we haven’t had any of those kinds of disruptions in terms of trying to bring different factions together.  We seem to be very successful at having editors cooperate in sharing resources.

8. Editorially, how is the workflow of staffers, journalists and editors organized to ready the more demanding weekend edition while putting up the daily paper?

It is a complex planning exercise every week.  Many of the weekend sections are planned weeks in advance, but we co-ordinate all of our plans on Tuesday and the feature sections go to bed Thursday night and early afternoon Friday.  Many of our weekend editors work very late on Thursday and leave early on Friday.

9. What are today’s figures for circulation / ad revenue for the weekday editions compared to the weekend edition?

We don’t talk about ad revenues publicly, but the weekend paper is clearly the largest of the week.  The circulation figures for Monday - Friday are approximately 330,000 a day.  That number climbs to over 400,000 on the weekend, despite the fact that many of our readers use us as a business newspaper, and business readership naturally falls on the weekend.

10. And, regarding the weekend edition, what are your objectives for next year? Do you want to develop more the online readership or the print readership?

Having just completed a redesign this year and this re-orientation of the weekend edition, I would like to take a break from thinking for a couple of months.  As far as the online and print goes, we don’t like to use “or” between them, but rather the word “and”.

Source: Ed Greenspon, editor of Globe & Mail