Julie Wright

I hope you’ve noticed our new Thursday features section called Lawrence Living. Beautifully designed and edited by features editor Jon Ralston, the section is meant to make readers’ lives easier.

The section is part of an evolution you’ve probably noticed over the past couple of years with our weekly features magazine. We’ve been trying to hit on the right mix of the most helpful features, and ultimately decided that it also was important to change the shape and size of the section.

Remember Go? It came out on Mondays and was a tabloid-sized magazine with a lot of fun local columns, a fitness feature, Dr. Wes Crenshaw’s Double Take, a fashion feature, a food feature, Linda Cottin’s ever-popular Fix-It Chick. But as we looked at the section, it became difficult to articulate what it was supposed to be and who our target readers were. That’s important not just to us as journalists, but to those who help us fund the enterprise. Advertisers want to know who they’re reaching.

Last summer we revamped the section to be far more shopping focused. We called it CheckOut, and moved some popular nonshopping features to other days — the food feature to Wednesday, Double Take to our Tuesday WellCommons health section, for example. We added more fashion and shopping coverage. And as 2014 moved along we felt the section was gaining traction.

We realized, however, that for our own purposes — ad sizes, printing and the like — the section really needed to be what we call a “broadsheet,” the full-size page that the rest of the newspaper is printed on. As we made that change, we took the opportunity to fine-tune the changes we made last year, adding new features (I think everyone missed a pet column) and retiring others.

“We wanted to create a section designed to make the day-to-day lives of its readers easier while entertaining them at the same time,” Jon says. “Lawrence Living is especially meant for heads of households who are interested in topics such as shopping, fashion, cooking, family activities, gardening and DIY home projects. We have some great writers who are experts in all of these fields and who are passionate about what they do. People who pick up a copy of Lawrence Living will learn something new they can apply to their everyday lives.”

Jon’s biggest inspiration came from magazines like Real Simple and Martha Stewart Living. Lawrence Living will have localized takes on the same kinds of topics, featuring advice from Lawrencians and information about local stores, events and food. Over the coming weeks, readers will see new regular features about how to take care of their pets, home decorating and an events calendar for families and kids.

I know that having the newspaper change often can be disconcerting. We also want to make sure that we’re always trying new things, evolving with readers’ needs and tastes and changing course when a better option is out there.

What I hope is that I can do a better job of letting you in on these changes before they happen. Now that I’ve had a chance to settle in as managing editor — I’ve been here for 13 months — I’m hoping to take a bit of time each week to share with you the thought processes behind the decisions we’re making in the newsroom.

I’m eager to receive your suggestions for column topics and, ideally, this will evolve into a conversation we have all week online. I’m available at 832-6361, at jwright@ljworld.com or on Twitter @JulieWrightKS.