Staff reportsThe Selma Times-Journal

Monday morning readers of The Selma Times-Journal will finally get to see the results of months of planning and work.

The redesigned Times-Journal will make its first appearance tomorrow.

“It’s almost like being a kid on Christmas morning,” Publisher Jesse Lindsey said. “We first began discussing a redesign nearly a year ago.

We had preliminary meetings back in November and since then we’ve been preparing for tomorrow.”

Working with professional design consultant, Ed Henninger, Director of OMNIA Consulting, various members of The Times-Journal staff worked together in groups focusing on such things as typography, content and organization.

“Every meeting and every discussion we had, it all came back to one simple thing,” Managing Editor

said. “‘What is the best choice for our readers.'”

Henninger returned once a month with redesigned pages, carefully rebuilding The Times-Journal piece-by-piece.

“When you’re discussing design and possibilities, sometimes it’s hard to really visualize the whole picture and how all the elements will work together,” Gullion said. “Then Ed would come back with these pages and sometimes it was just like ‘wow, that’s what we were talking about?’ It really was an exciting

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process.”

As the groups worked through a reorganizing process to make sure that regular elements like the comics, the police reports and TV grid will be in a consistent and easy to find place.

Committees also came up with new pages and reoccurring features like the NASCAR and Health Page and the daily Notables.

“The Notables are personally one of my favorite parts of the new design,” Lindsey said. “We’re a community newspaper and the daily Notables will allow us to recognize more of the great people of our community doing great things. Whether it’s on the baseball diamond, in the board room or just doing a good deed, the Notables will give us a chance to celebrate our readers.”

Gullion, however, said some of the new weekly special pages are his favorite.

“Well, I’m an old sports guy so when Ed showed us those NASCAR and Football pages, it got my heart racing a little bit,” he said.

The redesign will affect every aspect of the daily paper, including content, but the most noticeable changes will de the design.

“Changing the body type to an easier to read font will be a big asset for our readers,” Lindsay said. “The new type will be cleaner and more legible.

Combined with the new headline fonts and improved spacing, this redesign is going to make The Times-Journal a more modern and reader-friendly newspaper.”

Finally, Lindsey encouraged every reader that can to stop by Bienville Park, just down from The Times-Journal, Monday during their lunch hour to help celebrate the new design and talk with the newspaper staff that helped make it happen.

“We’re going to be giving away T-shirts, hats, cups and other goodies,” he said. “We’ll have food and drinks available, plus we’ll be giving cash prizes of $500, $300 and $200 away to three lucky winners. It’s going to be a great time.”

We welcome all comments or questions about our redesign, email us at

or call 875-2110.