Print Bits: Mail’s Busy Redesign; Times’ Losses

Mail: Mail Online is beta testing a re-design for its Daily and Sunday print titles. The new site’s chunky homepage is busier than even the new-look Guardian.co.uk‘s front. Beta.dailymail.co.uk crams an uncomfortable 145 story links in to a vast space that’s hard on the eye. Unusually, Associated built the content management system in-house. Editorial director Martin Clarke: “We couldn’t find anything on the market that did what we wanted it to do” (via Graun).

Times losses: Times Newspapers nearly halved its hitherto spiralling losses to £43.9 million in the year to June, according to Companies House filings (via Guardian). The paper was hit by investment in its new tabloid edition and redundancies that come with a £650 million upgrade to colour print presses. But better circulation and reduced costs, plus reduction in redundancy costs from £31.3 million to £6.3 million, helped the turnaround.