Your new Herald, at your service

Dear Reader,

Welcome to your new Herald.

The changes you will see throughout today’s edition are part of our overall effort to deliver news in the many ways readers expect. While The Herald for years has been a multi-media company, we are reorganizing our print and digital publications so they work together even better to meet your expectations.

Research by The McClatchy Co., our parent company, shows that readers expect information to be delivered both fast and in a format that’s easy to grasp. At the same time, readers want in-depth reporting on major local, state, national and international issues.

Your new Herald – along with heraldonline.com and our smartphone and tablet apps – is designed to meet all of those expectations.

In The Herald, our front page still will feature the most important local news stories every day. Our primary responsibility remains covering the people, places and events in York, Chester and Lancaster counties.

Our front page also will include multiple summaries of the major stories inside the newspaper. More than ever, the paper will be a digest of the day’s major stories, from Fort Mill and Rock Hill to Columbia, Washington and around the world.

We also will feature more of our personalities on the front page. Plus, because many readers say they are more interested than ever in commentary about current issues, we’ll feature more opinion articles out front. Those stories will be clearly marked as opinion, commentary, or a column.

The Herald has a bolder, more vibrant design. The section fronts feature more colorful displays and headlines, and the inside pages have more color photos and headlines, with color coding to help you more easily find each section.

We will use more tools for telling stories. The traditional newspaper story will remain, but we also will use more graphics, photos, information boxes and other features to provide information quickly and more efficiently.

Inside the A section, you will find more local news every day on page 3A. Our Opinion page remains inside the A section every day except Sunday, along with other state and national news.

To provide you more in-depth and analytical reporting, we’re adding a feature called Insight inside the A section in our Wednesday through Saturday editions. It will give you a deeper look each day into one or two local, state or national issues.

Insight also will become a stand-alone section on Sunday, replacing Viewpoint, and will include our Opinion and Books pages.

Also in our Sunday edition, we’re adding a section called Life. It will feature people and events in York, Chester and Lancaster counties, as well as from across South Carolina and the region.

In our Sports section, you still will find the best coverage anywhere of local high school teams. We know that coverage of key local games is important, but we also will focus on telling you about local players, coaches and others. We will continue to highlight the Winthrop Eagles, South Carolina Gamecocks, Clemson Tigers and Charlotte’s professional teams.

The Herald’s features sections – now called Explore – will continue helping you plan your next meal on Wednesday, manage your finances and learn about the latest technology on Thursday, sort through the best entertainment options on Friday, and learn about issues involving faith and family on Saturday.

To accommodate many of these changes, we have adjusted some of our other coverage. Our weather information is moving to page 2C in Wednesday through Saturday editions. The weather will be on the back page of the A section on Monday and Tuesday and on the back of the B section on Sunday.

We also have eliminated our full page of stock listings in favor of a more abbreviated list of stocks of local interest on our Business page. That page will be in the A section on Tuesday and in the C section on Wednesday through Saturday.

In addition to The Herald, I invite you to check out our website, heraldonline.com, and our mobile and tablet apps. We have reorganized them to give you information more quickly, emphasize in-depth stories, improve the display of our videos, and create a cleaner, more interactive design.

As always, you will find our e-edition, a replica of The Herald’s print edition, at heraldonline.com. The e-edition also is available as an app on your tablet.

As I mentioned earlier, all of these changes are designed to create print and digital publications that work more closely together to provide you the type of news you want, when you want it. If you’d like to comment on the changes, please go to new.heraldonline.com.

Thank you for reading The Herald and heraldonline.com.

This story was originally published July 14, 2015 at 6:33 PM with the headline "Your new Herald, at your service."