If you admire clean and classic journalism style, you probably became a fast fan of The Journalist theme. Well today The Journalist got a bit of a makeover, care of Lucian Marin, that might make you fall in love even more:
The bar that contains your tags, categories and post info is now more subtle, and has swapped positions with the comment count, bringing the attention to your brilliant content.
Your subtitle appears in a cute little word bubble in the upper right, and the header font has been freshened up as a sans serif.
Print geeks, enjoy. And don’t forget you’ll need to look under “T” for “The” under Design > Themes in your dashboard.
(UPDATE: Classic “The Journalist” is still available. It’s called The Journalist v1.3 under Design > Themes.)
WordPress.com News 
Thank you for returning the origional version so quickly. It does need changes, IMO, but not what was imposed.
It was ill considered to impose such changes, and without consent! Perhaps you should install a procedure whereby all future (major?) changes to themes are offered as a new version. Then they can be tested without the disruption this one has caused and if you include a FEEDBACK BOX at bottom of post you can see what works and why – or doesn’t and why by ACTUAL users of the new version. I would participate, give my time, in such a program if properly set up – if I know it is happening. I don’t know if you can you notify users of a specific theme.
I am now back to the first version and I’ve got my life back. 🙂 The time it was going to take to ‘fix’ the new version.
I will be checking the new version occasionally to see if it evolves to what I want. I suspect Lucian is absorbing the experience and perhaps something closer to the ‘yea’s and nay’s’ of this thread will be in the pipeline.
Regards. Mark
The best theme.
Fresh style, serious style.
Thank you nice job 🙂
Mantap…go…go…go…
Thanks! I’m back to the old version. I’m not a journalist (but a poet) but I like that the text is the most important thing and that the pictures look really good in this simple theme.
What I don’t like is the strange mixture of english and my own language (danish) in the black bar:
“Lagt i …. by stensamler på april 13th, 2007 Rediger”
Maybe that could be something to change? (or one could consider it a strange form of poetry 😉
I Like it verymuch, thak you
I did prefer the previous version, but just for the text font and the bubble (it doesn’t work very well with long sentences).
The new font seems too raw to me, the previous one (serif?) was more stylish, in my opinion.
Can’t you get available the previous version as a new theme?
thank you
Thanks for making 1.3 available again!
I wanna more makeover on Journalist theme… selamat deh perubahannya… inyong pengene ono gambar neng bagian judule….
Finally! I’ve been waiting for the new version to become available for use with WordPress.com for months! Many thanks! The v1.9 is more design-friendly but we’ll have to play with it to see if it’s better than the older one…For those who do prefer the old version – just stick with v1.3! I’ve switched to v1.9 myself. It’s a great idea for both versions to be available to use and I hope that this becomes a tradition for WordPress.com-hosted blogs! WP, you’re the best! 🙂
Nice…but I love my ocadia !
I can’t believe you rolled this out as an automatic replacement of the existing theme, in production, not as an option. This has broken the look of my blog.
I now have photos sized for the old blog overlapping the side menu, and ugly borders around my animated gifs and photos. This is an absolute disaster.
At the very least you can now make the old version available separately so I can repair the damage. The sooner the better please.
Yours very, very, very disgruntled.
OK, OK, panic over. I found the old version of the Journalist (1.3) was still available and switched back.
I still don’t think you should have updated existing users of v. 1.3 to v. 1.9 automatically. That is really not a way to make your users feel in control.
Yours a bit less disgruntled and marginally more forgiving. Note the marginally, mind.
Thank you very much. One more reason for me to use wordpress.com as you are listening users.
I vote for the old one, too. Nice you’ve kept them both.
Very nice. 😀
Thank you for giving us the option to choose between the two versions. Thank you for responding to our complaints. 🙂 You all are great.
it has great taste… thanks!
Excellent!
Thanks for listening to the users and reacting accordingly. What a relief to have the old theme back.
old theme is also available for use – now everyone is happy
Great!
real nice themes! wordpress rulez!
Very nice
OMG r u guys blind??? The old Journalist is still available for those of u who don’t like and it’s called The Journalist v1.3 under Design > Themes so stop complaining. btw nice new look
I’d like to give public kudos to you guys now for providing both options. Thanks.
Is it possible to somehow put the comment section to the bottom as before? On top and just under the title, as some commenters mentioned as well, it is very conspicious and disruptive.
Thanks a lot for prompt action on other comments.
i’ve pretty much always loved all the updates you guys do for WP.com. unfortunately, i wasn’t a big fan of the changes for the Journalist template (for many of the same reasons listed above). but, thanks for making the old version available again!
I am not the first to notice many commentators here like the new version but don’t even use The Journalist theme so don’t know the damage that was done. Perhaps when an old theme is being so drastically updated as this one was it would be a good idea for the designer to contact users of the theme for relevant feedback. Something like I suggested earlier in this thread. This process could help to produce some really fine work.
Making the new version available as an option is the easy solution and I am grateful wordpress (and Lucian) responded so quickly.
It wasn’t an option before.
Glad that it is now and am glad my blog’s theme is back to normal.
Sometimes things are better left untouched.
Loving the old version better. 🙂
It is better and cleaner.
i like it, and using it now.
me gusta mas que la otra y ahora la estoy usando.
“OMG r u guys blind??? The old Journalist is still available for those of u who don’t like and it’s called The Journalist v1.3 under Design > Themes so stop complaining. btw nice new look”
Qouted For Truth
YESH! YESH!
i like! im using it right now.
woo! can you say Web2.0 ? 🙂
First of all, I was shocked to see my blog switched over to the new version of Journalist without my being notified.
Second, the bubble looks silly.
Third, the blue border around the photos/images is unnecessarily distracting.
Fix these things and I’ll switch back to Journalist. As it is, I’ve been forced to switch to PressRow.
Ug ug ug. I don’t like the new version at all. The old one was classic, the new one is cheap. Sadly.
Nice one, lookin’ real fresh and clean.
Oh, no! Sorry, gang, I do not like it at all (and did not like it being done automatically, either). Many thanks for keeping the old version available. The new style is horsey; I find myself tripping over the hairline rules. Do not like. I shall leave you New Happy Journalists, and go return to what I know is much classier and better suited for my work. Fair winds!
Love it.
I like the new version, at least in preview mode. Very clean, very simple. Good handling of widgets. The only thing that stops me from switching to it is those gigantic graphical quote marks it uses to indicate blockquoted material. They contradict Journalist’s minimalist appearance. A simple vertical bar, as in Cutline (which I now use) would be better. Or nothing at all would be fine. Blockquoted text is indented, so extra graphics aren’t needed.
I’m also dubious about that dark block at the top for the blog’s tagline. Mine doesn’t seem to fit the available space, at least in preview mode. I suppose there’s no way to find out for sure without actually switching themes. That’s a minor issue. Cutline doesn’t display the tagline at all. I wonder if that dark field would vanish if there were no tagline.
Nice wordpress them. It’s simple.
nice keep it up:)
There is a mistake in the WP.com Theme Chooser. Both versions of the Journalist, v1.3 and v1.9 have exactly the same thumbnails. If you click on v1.9, the correct (new) Journalist theme shows up as a preview, but someone forgot to update the thumbnails.
I like the new version, but find the “cute little word bubble” rather hideous and conflicting with the serious disposition of the rest of the theme.
@polaris: Try refreshing and clearing your cache.
Strange… The revised version that everyone seems to look so much made me change for the “Rounded” theme!!
Crisp and open. It really punches the text. Nice.
I like it! That is a neat option!
Dave
Add me to the list of people who think the new version of The Journalist stinks.
Don’t like the new sans-serif font (one reason I picked the original template was because it uses the Georgia typeface) and I’m leaning against the light-blue box at the bottom.
More importantly, you changed my theme without my permission. That’s unacceptable.
Never ever liked this theme.
While I agree with all of Maximilian Forte’s points about the blog, what really annoys me was the lack of notification of the change, and that there was an automatic change – I had to go and find out for myself and see if there was an older version available. Poor show.
Not bad but I like the older version better.
I hate that font. Hard to read. Destroys whole theme.
Thumbs down!
No no no!! The new version is much better!! I love it, everyday I like it more.
Nice I will go see what it looks like right now I have wordpress classic.
Hmm seo says nice
It’s totally crap, now I have to fix my blog again.
The bubble brings the theme down and makes it look trivial.
You should have just created a Journalist 2 theme that people could choose to adopt.
Can’t you have them both at the bottom? Putting comments at the beginning is weird.
i had 3 blogs with this theme 😀 Thanks
It’s really nice, but I would like to be able to put my links in categories. Please!
Its great but i still love Depo 😉
I like it! But I still stick with darker themes though (as you can see on my weblog :D)
I like this theme,
I transfered from andreous 09
The left sidebar widgets came over automatically , but only after a few minutes and refreshes,
the right sidebar i had to reenter. Fortunately I had saved them.
Thanks.
hummmmmm, it’s pale …..sorry heather, i like somethin’ more colourful
I am liking this theme.
One point though,
It says a post is written by
If it said a post was Posted by, this would be better.
Not all post are written by me Some are just posted by me. The ratio of original content compared to Quoted content can be anything from 0% to 100%.
Thanks for a dignified looking theme.
Being a user of the Journalist, I have to say that I welcome these enhancements and am pleased to have the revisions. Many thanks for your efforts.
Awesome.
Not bad.. at least i can’t make it better from the beginning..
I like it more than Kubrick. However and sadly, the theme has not been fully localized/multi-languaged yet. Too much english texts… 😦
Wao,
Its Inspirational and Fascinating
Nice work!
It’s great..!! God job and good 💡
I add my vote to those who don’t like the new version of the theme: it messed up the display of the home-page and, in my humble opinion, the bar at the bottom of each post in grey is out of keeping with the monochrome style of the original.
If you want really to make improvements, how about a three-column version of the original, elegant Journalist theme…?
One positive development.
For those of us on low bandwidth (eg GPRS).
When the blog appears, the posts appear Before the widgets.
No need to wait for all the widgets to download first.
awesome minimalis
Subtitle in a speech bubble! Who would have thought of that…? Presumably someone of impeccable taste and artistic judgement! I’ll take it as a compliment… :c)
as a user of journalist i can only say, that id love see the option to choose between old and new style.
i like old style much better.
but anyway, im using journalist because its simple and pretty, i like minimalism.
Maybe a little margin on the left would be an improvement?
The comment at top made readers forget and confusing.
Usually the comment section at bottom is better after reading.
The date should reduce in size and high light, so reader know right away.
Yes, it’s fast loading and clean but the Cap to big.
The line under head can’t tell headline and Cap.
I like its clean look and fast, just the above change would be more better.
I love it for the following reasons.
(1) I love images that are bordered.
(2) The comments are never better below the post and the dates above.
(3) The bubble on the top is perfect for my information.
(4) Red hovering is necessary and they look lovely.
(5) Links in blue look great.
In simple words, please accept my thanks for the revisions.
I bet many people would agree with me.
Not bad at all!
The theme is very neat indeed. Speech bubble is interesting.
minimalist
nice article…
i like it!
I dig the theme. Thanks! My only beef is the blue border around photos. How to remove it? Hmmmmm….
😉
It’s really good.
Swish!
I agree with halle – the blue border around the photos disturb.
Changes are good,but I prefer the last version.
I got used to the old one. Took time to learn it. I do not see any point in having just another option on something that was good anyway.
Thanks so much:)