Jim:

Your new A section is very convenient to read. However I do not understand the paper coming in two different formats.

Francis Murphy

. . .

I really like the new format for the front section. Easier to read while I eat breakfast or sit at my desk at work. Is the plan to eventually shift the entire paper to that format? If so, I'd be a fan. It is cumbersome to have two different sizes within the same paper.

The comics in the sports section is OK with me, but you might have issues with households who have one person who likes to read the sports section and another who reads the comics.

Regina Porter

. . .

I won't pretend that every reader comment has been positive. Over my years at the Tribune, I've learned that change of any kind usually doesn't go down well with some of our longtime readers. "If it ain't broke...," they say.

The problem is the business model is broke. The newspaper industry has fallen on financial hard times.

As a result, we at the Tribune have asked a lot of you over the last year as we've implemented a series of changes designed to get the Tribune on sound financial footing while doing our best to remember that readers are our North Star.

So I braced myself for the worst last Wednesday and was pleasantly surprised on the first morning of our format changes for readers in Mesa, Chandler, Apache Junction and Tempe. I received one positive e-mail after another. Some of them were gushing in their enthusiasm. People who had lived in places like Denver, Chicago and New York and were familiar with tab newspapers were particularly comfortable with the change.

Others were like Frank and Regina. They liked it, but they had questions. Their questions were repeated again and again by many people who liked or didn't mind the long-tab A section:

Would we consider making all sections that size and would we consider putting comics and our "fun and features" page somewhere other than in Sports?

I have some answers. But I want to know what you think.

Click to view "Actual Long Tab" version for the A section and "Prototype Short Tab" for the AA section

First is the issue of whether we would consider printing all sections the same size as our A section. The answer is we can't - at least not in those exact dimensions. Our new press does not have the capacity to print the internal sections. We're working that press pretty hard to print four different editions of the A section every night.

Our older press, the one on which we now print our Sports and Nation & World sections, can be rigged to print those sections as smaller tabs along the lines of our Get Out magazine. Images of how those sections would look accompany this column.

Which would you prefer: short tabs or more traditional-looking Sports and Nation & World news pages?

I take the credit or blame for placing comics and our puzzles/advice pages in Sports.

Last fall we invited focus groups in to tell us what they thought of a prototype of the paper you are looking at today. In the prototype, we had put the comics in the Nation & World section. Our focus groups of readers did not like them there.

They didn't like the idea of "Family Circus" being on one page and a story on suicide bombings in Iraq on the page next to it.

So I put those pages in the Classified section. Many readers hated that choice and let me know it. Now Classifieds is no longer a separate section. Our advertising department moved them into the A section.

That left me with having to decide where to relocate the comics and fun and features pages. My choices were the Sports section and Nation & World. I chose Sports.

What should you do? Would you prefer that comics and fun and features pages be in the Nation & World section? Or Sports?

We did make one change to make it easier to pull comics and puzzles out of Sports. As of Tuesday, we put those two pages back to back. Readers can tear that page out of Sports and keep the peace in the family. Is that an acceptable solution?

What do you think?

1. Should we put Sports and Nation & World sections in the formats pictured here?

2. Would you prefer to see comics and fun and features pages in the Nation & World section or in Sports positioned so that the page could be torn out?

Email your preferences to jripley@evtrib.com