life Etc
The first issue of The Independent on Sunday under editor Tristan Davies will get a complete redesign this weekend with all four sections returning to a broadsheet format and a fifth section dropped.
Davies promises the paper will look different immediately – he arrived on Tuesday but has been planning the transformation since his appointment in April. He has overseen the redesign, working with art director Carolyn Roberts and consultant Murphy Price.
Davies’s predecessor, Janet Street-Porter, wished to remain in the chair until last weekend to organise General Election coverage.
Key elements of the redesign are:
lReality, the US-size, lifestyle and TV listings section, is scrapped. Davies decided it did not fit in with his restructure. "I don’t think we need a second magazine," he said.
lOut, too, goes the second section, Culture, to be replaced by Life Etc, which will have a features-driven front and incorporate some of the content of Reality.
lThe paper’s sports section will be expanded to become, Davies claims, the biggest of any Sunday, under the title Sportsweek.
lThe Business section and The Sunday Review, now both broadsheet, will also grow. TV listings from Reality will go into the The Sunday Review. Davies thinks this will be a more natural home for them as a broadsheet format will give them more scope.
Davies has also made some key appointments. Political columnist Anne McElvoy transfers from The Independent to become executive editor (comment).
Peter Victor rejoins the IoS from the Daily Express, where he was assistant editor with a news and production brief, to take over as home news editor while current home news editor David Randall becomes assistant editor, working across news and sport.
Nick Coleman, editor of The Independent’s Weekend Review moves to the IoS to be features editor.
Richard Askwith, editor of The Sunday Review, has replaced Davies at The Independent as executive editor (features).
Andrew Tuck has left his job as editor of the daily’s Saturday magazine to edit The Sunday Review.
Reality editor Sasha Slater and picture editor Kate Suiter have both left the paper. Reality production editor Paula Rodney was already working her notice and has also left.
By Jean Morgan
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