The Plaindealer just celebrated its 148th birthday.

Personally, I don’t think it looks a day over 99.

Still, from time to time, we need to show the paper some love and spruce it up.

That’s why we’ve been working hard for the past few months on a fresh look for the Plaindealer.

We’ll be launching a new look this month. It’s the second time we’ve done this in our six-year tenure of owning the newspaper.

Mostly, it’s about freshening its presentation. I think the most significant change you’ll notice is a cleaner, more streamlined appearance. We’re going to use a new typeface that will make the articles easier to read, something we heard we needed to do from our focus group participants who helped us back in March, analyzing the paper and giving us feedback.

It’s a complicated process. Redesigning a newspaper involves careful consideration of every element – everything from the lettering we use for headlines and articles to how we’re allocating precious space every week.

Thank you to our focus group participants – 23 local residents who read the paper and gave us a few hours of their time. Their opinions helped us make decisions on the redesign and improve the quality of your local newspaper. We appreciated their candid feedback and implemented changes based on your opinions.

During the focus group meeting, we had an independent facilitator named Kevin Slimp gather feedback. We had Kevin come help us for a few reasons – namely, we wanted to make sure the participants felt comfortable giving authentic answers and not worry about hurting our feelings. Also, Kevin is a newspaper design guru who has helped more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. He knows what he’s doing.

We gather plenty of informal feedback all the time, interacting with readers everywhere from the line at the post office to when we run into them at local concerts or the coffee shop. That’s one of the great things about having a locally owned, independent newspaper – the accountability goes both ways.

But this is the first time we’ve purposely gathered a variety of readers from different backgrounds and ages to give their opinions together, in a group, going through papers page by page.

Kevin’s report came back with this first statement, “Overall, people love your newspaper. So we won’t do anything to mess that up.”

It’s clear our readers have a sense of ownership with the Plaindealer. We take that responsibility seriously. He also said it was the second-most engaged focus group he’s ever held – a huge compliment for participants.

Here’s what else we learned from Kevin’s report (these are just the high points):

• Readers value our hard news reporting and particularly our work covering local government and investigative stories.

• Readers like our feature coverage and human interest stories, and would like to see more of that.

• Readers would like an easier to read text for articles and photo cutlines.

• Readers no longer find the weather page to be an essential element to include in the newspaper. They get their forecasts and information from more immediate sources online and weather apps. Please note we are keeping Karen Risch’s column, in which she focuses on weather and climate.

• The calendar of events is incredibly popular and readers like it but would prefer an improved design.

• Readers value letters to the editor on local topics. They would like to see more of them submitted by readers, and would like to see more editorial columns from the publishers.

• There is little interest from readers in having the newspaper publish police blotters with limited information, and readers would rather have brief stories giving more context and information about police activity.

• In general, readers do not value the editorial cartoon we have been publishing or find it too controversial. Some have accused us of being politically biased due to its contents (even though we have no editorial control of those cartoons and they’re drawn by a cartoonist we have never met). We’re eliminating it in the redesign, though we’re open to possibilities of using other cartoonists in the future if that opportunity presents itself.

• Long-term readers who have lived here for a while tend to like our “Looking Back” history feature column. We’re keeping it.

• Focus group participants said they did not like the advertisements on the front page of the newspaper. Unfortunately, those help keep the lights on around here and we cannot eliminate them. Front-page advertisements have been a part of newspapers for more than a decade now. That ship has sailed.

Redesigning the paper means we ask questions like, what do we keep? What do we say goodbye to? What are readers telling us they value or could do without?

The goal is to create a more user-friendly newspaper that helps showcase the stories we tell about the community every week. We can write the most compelling articles, but if they’re presented in a manner that makes them difficult to read, it cuts down on our ability to be effective.

Presentation matters. And whether you’re reading the physical paper or the e-edition, we think you’ll like the improvements we’re making.

Beyond the visual improvements, we’ve also made some changes to the Plaindealer based on feedback we received from those focus group sessions. You probably already noticed some of them.

We incorporated a new feature called “Meet Your Neighbor” to highlight local residents who would not be in the paper otherwise.

We found a prep sports columnist and had him cover spring sports for Ouray and Ridgway schools. We were unable to find a local writer to do this for us, so we used our network of journalists to find an experienced columnist within the state.

We also are launching a new feature, a community photo page, called “Good For You!” It’s a space where we can accept photos for publication from readers, which highlight accomplishments and celebrations in the community that wouldn’t otherwise garner news coverage. Stay tuned for an explanation of how to submit those photos and what we need from you to consider them for publication.

We hope the redesign of the Plaindealer not only makes it easier to read and a more attractive product, but also illustrates our commitment to the community. Those of you who have been reading the paper a long time – including the past six years of our tenure as owners and publishers – know we’re invested in bringing you the best possible newspaper we can each week.

It’s kind of like renovating a home. In this case, the bones are good. The foundation is sturdy. We just needed a fresh coat of paint. We hope you like it.

Erin McIntyre is the co-publisher of the Plaindealer. Email her at erin@ouraynews.com.