The "New " Qatar Tribune

Anyone seen the newly designed Qatar Tribune today...

Take a look at the following link...

http://www.qatar-tribune.com/data/20100314/content.asp?section=first1_1

and the attached article:

QT’s new avatar builds bridges between East & West

AJIT KUMAR JHA

Welcome to the new avatar of Qatar Tribune.

The Sanskrit word ‘avatar’ means incarnation, or to be more accurate, manifestation, or appearance.

Since Qatar Tribune has turned threeand- a-half years old this month, it is time for us to get out of our nappies and don a new appearance, the fresh look of a frisky youngster ready to strike it big.

As you pore over the QT pages, you will discover that a new snazzy look combines a smart new design with fresh editorial content and an iconoclastic style with innovative ideas.

First, a quick summary of our redesign: Being a young paper, we decided to increase the colour component of our editions.

In a post-television world where people are visually hooked on to plasma and LCD monitors, the grey drab look of old black and white newspapers is surely out, the glossy mix of cyan and magenta is in.

We begin by introducing a burgundy masthead, which some might interpret as Qatarising the paper.

After all, it is the Tribune, the popular champion of diverse communities living in Qatar, both citizens and expatriates.

Since QT is a mirror for this incredibly dynamic nation, the dramatic changes in Qatar, particularly in its economy, society, culture, education, healthcare and sports are reflected in the changes in Qatar Tribune, in QT’s pages, even in its new design.

The inspiration for the burgundy masthead comes from our Arabic sister publication, Al Watan.

So from our more prosaic black and white masthead we have transformed into a new look defined as ruddier than the cherry, sweeter than the berry.

We have even switched our typeface: from Kepler to Georgia.

Ever since the Boston-based designer, Mathew Carter, developed Georgia for Microsoft in 1996, this elegant, quietly idiosyncratic typeface has become the most fashionable typeface both for newly designed newspapers and much more on the Internet.

Typefaces slip in and out of fashion like in every other area of design, but right now there is a Georgia revolution going on.

Whether you log on to the NYT website or that of the architecture magazine, “Metropolis”, it is Georgia all the way, defining a modern, liberal, forward looking, freedom loving, irreverential, nononsense, pesky yet not flashy, newspaper.

New style brings in new ideas.

With change in form, editorial content is bound to change.

In terms of structure, we have inserted our Nation section into our main section.

However, Business, Sports and Chill Out continue to appear as independent sections.

We have introduced a new page on gender issues about the new woman in our Nation section.

No more tokenism in the name of women on International Women’s Day.

Run exclusively by women staffers, who have joined our team in a big way, the gender-specific page will be concerned with problems facing different kinds of women.

Girls are not only outsmarting boys in schools, colleges and the workplace in Qatar as in the rest of the world, they are indeed redefining the very blueprint of the ‘brave new world.’ We are also planning to add new features for our younger readers, teenagers and school and college students, who are swelling the ranks of our ever growing readership.

We have provided space for E-mail letters, ‘tweets’ and SMS messages in the ‘Have Your Say’ column along with more space devoted to blogs added to our Analysis page.

We have even introduced a ‘Kool Kit’ at the right hand bottom column of the Analysis page which is devoted to ideas that school students grapple with in schools, for instance, what is the purpose of teaching subjects like Algebra.

We start with Algebra (etymologically derived from the Arabic word Al Jabr) to remind the readers that the subject originated in the Arabic world.

With the new sociological profile of our readers come new thrust areas — more articles devoted to education, health, the environment, social and cultural themes.

In our Entertainment section we plan to cover cinema beyond Hollywood and Bollywood.

Given the recent success of the Doha Tribeca festival, we plan to cover cinema from diverse regions such as the Arab world, the Philippines as well as Malayalam, Tamil and Bengali cinema.

We would offer you more reading materials on cinema and entertainment in our Nation and Chill Out sections.

And also look out for our once famous Kerala Korner we are reviving.

In terms of our business focus, you might have noticed that we are moving away from negative stories tracking the impact of the recession (QT Spotlight on Global Recession) to more positive ones on the Road to Recovery.

We will attempt to profile dramatic recovery stories of individual entrepreneurs and businesses both in Qatar and in the rest of the world.

We will also try to figure out what went wrong with banks, financial institutions, the real estate sector, the construction and other industries and markets and what can be done to set things right.

Even as we attempt to understand what has gone wrong with the markets in the developed world, we will delve into what is going right with emerging world markets, in the Gulf as well as the BRIC countries.

People often ask us who are the main readers of Qatar Tribune— Qatari citizens or expatriates, westerners or easterners, women or men, the old or the young? The truth is we discover a change every time we try to survey our readership.

In order to understand our readers, we are planning to introduce a comprehensive reader survey, which will attempt to find out your choices, preferences and opinion about us, about Qatar Tribune.

We need to know what you like and dislike about us.

We need to carry on an ongoing conversation with you to better understand your desires and tastes and try our best to come up to your expectations.

Newspapers are the best vehicle of cultural conversations between diverse communities.

To quote Arthur Miller, “A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself.” Qatar is a telling example of a modern cosmopolitan nation peopled by communities drawn from the entire globe.

We aptly represent this global mosaic.

We hope that through the pages of Qatar Tribune, our readers from all over the planet will carry on this great global dialogue amongst diverse communities, cultures and civilisations.

The purpose of Qatar Tribune is to end the global clash between civilisations and build bridges between the East and the West.

Don’t forget, dear readers, to tell us in our QT surveys, what you don’t like about Qatar Tribune and what you do.