The Western Gazette: A digital-first transformation for print media.
OVERVIEW
Rebranding visual identity, revamping the mobile and web experience, managing the end-to-end journey of three 20-page physical print issues, editing and publishing 100+ articles digitally and in print for an audience of over 39,000 Western University students. I managed the culture, graphics, and video teams.
ROLE
Managing Editor
YEAR
2018-2020
TOOLS
Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Blox CMS
DELIVERABLES
Published Articles/Assets, Mobile Experience, Website Redesign
THE CURRENT STATE
The life or death of print media on campus.
In 2019, the Ontario Government attempted to slash student funding. Known as the Student Choice Initiative (SCI), the government lobbied for student ancillary fees to be optional, meaning student papers across Ontario were anticipating a major funding cut.
So the question became: how do we rally voices and get them to care about campus crises, student issues, and ultimately, the importance of our community?
RESEARCH AND HISTORY
I did some digging on the Gazette's history and its current presence on campus.
I collected over 150 anecdotes, quotes, data points and experiences from dozens of alumni and current students, dug through The Gazette's history and learned about it's deep-rooted reputation against the university's executives and student council.
Here's the root of the problem.
(1) Historically, The Gazette was brutally honest and unapologetic about everything, and not in the way Western administrators liked, so the paper stopped publishing the raw and outrageous content that students absolutely loved and related to.
26% of students surveyed in 2019 have never picked up a Gazette issue before.
Michael Laine (Gazette alum)
The Western Gazette print archives from the 70s-80s
(2) Modern students prefer to consume digital news content instead of printed newspapers. The Gazette created their first website in 2015, but engagement was still fairly low, in the dozens.
According to published article analytics, culture, opinions, and entertainment coverage, or articles with multimedia content such as video, had higher engagement than our critical news stories or articles with no multimedia content (which was most of our news stories).
92% of students surveyed (2019) said they get their news on social media.
84% of students surveyed said they actually prefer social media news (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook) instead of the Gazette.
The Gazette's first website in 2015
The Gazette's website in 2019
Best performing content with 16k views, with the last viral video at 25k, 8 years ago in 2011.
(3) Most people are unengaged with student issues because they don't know where to find information.
67% of students in first year surveyed said they have never heard of the Gazette.
62% of students surveyed said they have never browsed through the Gazette's website.
So we pivoted our coverage strategy…
A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
R.I.P. print and fluff, welcome digital journalism, multimedia, and hard news.
We stopped printing weekly to focus our budget and energy into hard news multimedia content. We dug deep into student struggles, brought diverse voices to light, and captured the essence of student life.
Our online presence and brand identity was created with a clean, responsive layout and a heavy focus on multimedia journalism. Several changes to the website were made, making the digital user experience more seamless and enjoyable.
PRINT PRODUCTS
Okay, print is not completely dead…
For our existing readers and legacy audience, we understood the importance of print products. Based on importance and historical popularity, we decided to print four special issues: the SAO issue, the Housing issue, the Sex issue, and the Spoof issue (unfortunately cut due to the start of the pandemic).
THE SAO ISSUE
SAO (Student Academic Orientation) is our first impression on students. In previous years, the Gazette wrote glamourous stories about university and campus life that certainly appealed to sparkly-eyed new students who were just beginning their academic journeys, but our new approach was to write stories about the dark side of Western.
We wanted students to see us as an unfiltered source of truth that tour guides don't reveal.
THE HOUSING ISSUE
Roughly 90% of Western students are from out of town. While most first-years live in on-campus residence, most students need to find housing in the city.
This issue highlights important stories from tenant rights, residence catastrophes, and tips and tricks for renting.
THE SEX ISSUE
Historically, the sex issue had always been controversial, but important. It not only gained the most engagement, it also sparked important conversations around sex education, both physical and mental, healthy relationships, beauty standards, and more.
LESSONS LEARNED
Three takeaways from leading a digital-first transformation.
(1) Be adaptable and courageous in the face of changing environments.
The Gazette faced the looming shadow of funding cuts and a dwindling print audience. Instead of being comfortable, we boldly pivoted to a digital-first approach and visual rebrand, focusing on hard news and multimedia content. This not only emphasized our presence on campus but it also resonated with current students' thinking, behaviours, and mindsets. Our adaptability and human-centred thinking gave us a unique edge to remain Canada's largest student paper.
(2) Care about what your audience cares about.
Through surveys, we realized students were disengaged because they didn't know where to find information. By revamping our website with a clean, responsive layout and putting our efforts into multimedia journalism, we came to students with engaging and visually pleasing content, while reporting on important stories within the community. By the end of the year, we increased our website engagement by 30%!
(3) Listen to your data, they are usually 99.999999% right.
I measured the performance of previously published articles for the last 3 years (2016-2019) and found that culture and opinion pieces or articles with multimedia generally garnered more attention than news or sports stories or articles with no multimedia content. This insight guided us to rethink our content strategy. By creating more interesting multimedia content around our stories (reporting videos, graphics, infographics, maps, recordings, graphs, etc.), we increased our social media engagement, with our top performing video on YouTube gaining 16k views!
