Although we can't see it for ourselves on the World Wide Web, Washington Post readers recently wrote in to the newspaper regarding format changes they were not pleased to see.
From reading Shankar Vedantam's fascinating Department of Human Behavior piece ["Hillary Clinton and the Action Bias," March 31], I can only conclude that your recent format changes -- which I find cluttered, simplistic, distracting and generally ill-conceived -- must have been motivated by "the desire to do something rather than nothing" in the face of declining readership. Post management has made a serious blunder here: If readers desire a dumbed-down, sexed-up USA Today-type format, they will simply subscribe to USA Today.
In the interest of good journalism, please run, do not walk, from this unseemly and unnecessary experiment. We loyal, dedicated readers deserve better.
-- Jim Hergen
Undoubtedly you expected crotchety, longtime readers to have adverse reactions to the recent changes you made to the paper's format. At 22, I don't know if I am old enough to be considered crotchety or a longtime reader, but I have been reading the paper long enough to be aggravated by the changes.
I'm sure it's just a matter of time until I get over the different fonts. However, the extra information blurbs at the top of certain pages are simply distracting and remind me of all the cluttered graphics and tickers of a cable-news channel, from which I always sought sanctuary in The Post.
-- Nicholas Prather
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