May 7, 1999

The changes that you see in this issue are part of our ongoing effort to make Psychiatric News more valuable to our readers. We began our redesign efforts several months ago with the goals of making Psychiatric News more user friendly and giving the paper a more contemporary look. We interviewed several graphic design firms and screened multiple approaches to come up with one that we believed best accomplished our goals.

In addition to the obvious changes you see on these pages, we have added color to all our pages, created sections so that related articles are now placed together under the same heading, added news summaries to help readers identify more quickly the articles of interest to them, and revamped our classified ad section. We plan to offer additional variety in the look of Psychiatric News by alternating the color palette that we use for the front-page nameplate in future issues.

During this process we also conducted a survey to determine what readers thought of Psychiatric News and what they would like to read. We surveyed a random sample of 1,000 members, as well as all members of the Assembly and Board of Trustees. We received over a 50 percent response rate. Not unexpectedly, there was a wide range of opinion about the content of the paper. While we were pleased that Psychiatric News was valued by more members than were other papers offering news about psychiatry, we find room for improvement. In a nutshell, you told us that you were interested in more clinical and research-related news and had continued interest in current departments featuring opinion, such as Viewpoints and Letters to the Editor.

Though we still have some additional analysis of our data to complete, during these next few months we will be shifting our coverage to respond more closely to the feedback we received from our survey and any ongoing feedback we receive from you.

I thank those APA members who took the time to complete and return our readership survey and those who have offered ideas for improvement in other forums. Now, you the reader will be the judge of this work in progress. We look forward to your comments.

Dr. Krajeski is editor-in-chief of Psychiatric News.