The past month or so has jolted those of us who pay attention to the stock market.
I don’t mean just the roller coaster prices; I am also referring to the stock listings in The Dallas Morning News.
In early March, the Business section unveiled newly designed listings that featured 10-day summaries of the Dow Jones, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq and a couple of other major exchanges; foreign exchange rates; prices of commodities; and stock prices for 50 major companies in our region. It offers more information than the old report.
The reaction? Our audience was not pleased.
Business Editor Javier E. David says The News has received “probably dozens” of emails from readers who dislike the new format. Among other things, they find it harder to read, and they say the information doesn’t meet their needs. The response surprised David.
“We thought we were making a minor change that people wouldn’t be paying attention to,” he told me. Turns out, “people were paying attention.”
Laurie Joseph, graphics editor for The News, is the person who makes sure that the stock listings appear every day. She says: “I’ve lost sleep over this. It’s been quite an ordeal. You never want to disappoint readers in this way.”
The Associated Press designs our stocks report. In the past, the wire service presented listings that were “completely customizable,” Joseph says, which allowed her “to tell them exactly what we wanted to offer readers.” The stock pages were crafted “totally to our specifications.”
The old format featured an at-a-glance look at the major exchanges. A green arrow showed that an exchange had gone up the day before; a red arrow indicated that it had gone down. Same with commodities such as gold, crude oil, natural gas and others. At the bottom of the page, readers found prices of major Dallas-Fort Worth stocks.
Partly due to its own outdated technology, the AP streamlined its report and altered the design of its listings. For example, the new listings no longer use the red and green arrows. Instead, readers must wade through gray charts that call for them to look closely to understand what they’re seeing. The AP’s new design is “not editable,” Joseph says. And it is not a good reading experience.
“It’s a design problem,” Joseph says.
As evidence, she points out that the charts feel so jumbled that some readers think commodity prices have gone away. Not true. Close readers of the report know they can still find that information (which matters to those who have kept a close eye on commodities such as gold, which has rocketed past $3,000 an ounce.)
“We’re now focusing on solutions that will help with the presentation,” Barry Bedlan, AP’s global products director, told me.
Another challenge is that the stocks and commodities content that we are now giving readers may not be what they want or need. Over the next few weeks, David welcomes suggestions from our audience. You can email him at Javier.david@dallasnews.com.
“We are very attentive to the needs and frustrations and wants and desires of our readers,” David said. “We value them, and we hear them. We take [their concerns] very seriously.”
A couple of lessons emerge from what David calls “this fiasco.”
For one, it is another reminder that readers resist change. In some ways, this is good news. It tells us that they feel like they have a relationship with The News, one in which they want and expect a say in the content they consume day in and day out. They are invested. But this also means that it isn’t enough to include a note to readers for a week or two after we have made a change (as the Business section did). We should gather their input beforehand.
This is the third time in recent months that readers have voiced their frustration about changes in The News. Some were angry when we did away with Doonesbury on Sundays, and some were upset when we ditched movie reviews in Guide. (Editors brought back the reviews.) Now this.
Comics, movie reviews and stock listings are all examples of how readers come to us not just for facts and context but for entertainment and utility. We might assume that they can find all this content online, but many still prefer getting it from The News. When we change these parts of the paper, readers don’t view them as “minor.” Every tweak means something.
As The News works hard to be an essential read for North Texas, change is inevitable. Readers should expect — and welcome — that. But as we consider changes, these lessons are worth keeping in mind.
Stephen Buckley is a veteran journalist and journalism professor at Duke University. He serves as The Dallas Morning News public editor.
