As I walked into Pierre’s small airport waiting area, waiting to board my flight back to Indy, I discovered just how tightly-knit a city Pierre is.

A very nice woman asked, “You’re the guy who redesigned the Capital Journal, aren’t you?”

Who, me? Well, yeah, that was me …

“I gotta tell you, that’s a great-looking job you all did. It looks wonderful. It looks like a real newspaper now,” she said, after explaining to me that her husband works in the pressroom and she’d seen me at the paper the day before.

The man next to her piped up: “I love the new size! What a difference in the paper.”

Two or three more people down the row started looking at us all and nodding. And thus began our one and only reader survey of the redesign (hey, it’s a 5,000-circulation daily!).

Every city should have readers like Pierre does. These people feel connected to their paper, a formerly-family owned, afternoon paper that hadn’t redesigned in … well, a VERY long time. These readers had patiently waited for the changes to start coming, and they actually looked forward to the redesign.

Usually we fear launch day in redesigns, for readers are usually reluctant to change their habits. But in Pierre, it was stunningly unanimous. The readers ate up the new look, and they want more. Now. But they’ll have to be slightly patient — it’s two months until the CJ switches to an AM publication.

But when that happens, it looks like the hometown paper in Pierre will be the one everyone is reading every morning. MG Redesign was very proud to play a part in reconnecting this paper to its readers.

—Scott Goldman

Welcome back to the MG blog! Sorry we've been away for so long.

We have liftoff! The Capital Journal debuted its new size and new look Monday afternoon in Pierre, SD, to solid reviews from a readership eager for an updated look. In an area that's very devoted to its newspaper and its traditions, publisher Russ Cannon reported three phone calls last night and several more this morning — and they were were all positive! Several area leaders saw the new paper yesterday and gave it big thumbs-up. (Nice thing about a smaller town — instant feedback!)

The CJ took a substantial trimming, going from a 52-inch web to a 48-inch in one slice. The newspaper basically looked like it spent the weekend on the South Beach Diet. The paper also debuted a second section each day, headed by its popular People page, now in living color!

Kudos to the newsroom staff for making this happen, especially Ken Potter, who stepped in to the news editing role on a temporary basis about 6 weeks ago. Ken made this redesign come to life, which wasn't easy considering he was working without 17 percent of the newsroom staff!