Europe might have it right.

There has been lots of discussion on the death of newspapers since news content has been made available in new media, but most thoughts about saving the newspaper industry consist of cost-cutting ideas (reducing the physical size of the newspaper, etc). One thing that isn’t really taken into account is reader satisfaction in regards to smartly marrying the content of the newspaper and its design. The Society for News Design chose 4 newspapers to win its 28th edition of the World’s Best-Designed, none of which were American papers. Maybe, instead of focusing on cutting costs, American Newspapers should focus on merging design and content, and creating a visually more appealing newspaper (Think Al Ries’ Retailers Make Same Marketing Mistake as Airlines). While having a nicely designed paper won’t save the newspaper industry, it is certainly a start in the right direction of focusing on improving and moving-forward.

Thoughts?