Behind the Headlines

Starting Monday, you’ll see some changes in the layout and look of the Herald-Leader.

The changes will provide a more consistent, easier-to-follow reading experience throughout the daily newspaper, while also saving on newsprint costs.

We’ll be adding or bringing back some things you’ve told us you want — more space for daily business news and stories, a free-standing Tuesday health section, a full-color Weekender and a daily box of TV highlights, to name a few.

Here’s what you’ll notice most:

There will be three sections Monday through Saturday. On those days, the A section and the City/Region section will be combined into a single News section.

You’ll find City/Region on page A3, including a daily digest of news and briefs from around our coverage area. Obituaries will now run in this News section. The Nation/World page will remain, though it will move back a few pages in the section.

The Herald-Leader’s primary focus is local reporting about news and life in Lexington and Kentucky. By moving City/Region into the front section, we’ll be emphasizing this local news mission even more.

Other things to note about the News section:

■ The Opinion, Commentary and Feedback pages will remain in the the A section.

■ Pop!, along with the new TV highlights box, will remain on A2.

■ The Kentucky Lottery results will move to A2 as well.

Monday through Saturday, the paper’s three sections will be: News, Sports and on different days, Business Monday, Life or Weekender.

The Sunday newspaper format will remain unchanged, with a separate City/Region section, Sports, Life + Arts, Sunday Comics and an Opinions/Ideas section.

We will bringing back a Tuesday features section, with a focus on health, an area that is at the top of the news now more than ever.

All of the features sections are being refocused around a Life theme that will provide greater flexibility in the content that runs there, while still highlighting the primary themes and special features you’ve come to expect. In weeks to come, you’ll be seeing a wider variety of content in these sections, with an emphasis on the local stories and personalities that you can find only in the Herald-Leader.

Comics will continue to run on two pages in this section. And on Fridays, the entire Weekender section will now have color on every page.

The weekly features lineup will be:

■ Monday — Business Monday

■ Tuesday — Life + Health

■ Wednesday — Life + Neighbors

■ Thursday — Life + Food

■ Friday — Weekender

■ Saturday – Life + Home and Life + Faith

■ Sunday — Life + Arts

The weather will run on the back of Sports, as will the daily Your Health feature, seven days a week.

Now, a few words about business news.

The Business page will run in the Sports section Tuesday through Saturday.

We will be reducing the amount of stock listings on the Business page to make more space available for business news, stories and photos, both local and national. This change doubles the amount of space available each day for news about business and the economy.

The weekly stock and mutual fund listings in Business Monday will remain the same. If one of your stocks was cut from the daily page, you can go here to create a free portfolio tracker.

Longtime financial columns The Motley Fool and Bruce Williams, which have run infrequently in recent months because of space constraints in Business Monday, will find permanent homes on the expanded Tuesday and Saturday pages, respectively.

Throughout the paper, we have made subtle style changes to maximize the space we have available. The goal is to effectively use the space in the newspaper to continue to give you the local news, sports, business and features content you can’t get anywhere else.

- Peter Baniak (pbaniak@herald-leader.com)

It’s known by many names: watchdog journalism, investigative journalism, accountability journalism.

It’s the kind of journalism that digs under rocks, that tells you something you don’t already know, that looks beyond press releases and news conferences and scripted news events to find out how public money is being spent, or how public officials are behaving.

It’s the kind of journalism that the Herald-Leader has long been known for in Kentucky.

By the calls and comments I get on an almost-daily basis, many of you have noticed that, over the last year or so, the Herald-Leader has redoubled its attention to this kind of journalism.

You’ve read and commented on stories that delved into the state’s $880 million courthouse building program, and on a series of investigations into spending at public and quasi-public institutions (Blue Grass Airport, Lexington Public Library, the Kentucky League of Cities, the Kentucky Association of Counties).

These stories have had many things in common: They’ve examined areas of spending that normally don’t elicit public scrutiny. They’ve all led to changes, either in personnel, spending habits or policies.

And they have all benefited from feedback and tips from you, the readers of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com.

Now we’re adding a new tool in our efforts to hold government, institutions and those in power accountable. It’s a tool that we hope will make it even easier for you to follow our watchdog reporting efforts, and to participate in them as well.

This weekend, the Herald-Leader launches a new “Watchdog” page on the Web. You can find it at www.kentucky.com/watchdog.

This page is an extension of our recent watchdog reporting efforts – the kind of investigative, dig-below-the-surface journalism that you won’t get from other local media or the blogosphere.

On the watchdog page, you can easily track the Herald-Leader’s top investigative reports, as well as follow-up stories that flow out of them.

A “data sleuth” section connects you to many searchable databases of public records, from government salaries to expense reports, nursing home violations to lawsuits. We invite you to look through these records, and to let us know if you find anything interesting, or worth further checking.

A “citizen watchdog” feature connects you to resources and information on ways to do your own investigating — tips for filing public records requests, contact information for public officials, links for other sources of public information.

You can read great examples of watchdog reporting from other journalists around the country.

And you can meet and contact the Herald-Leader’s accountability reporters, a team that we recently expanded to ensure we continue to focus on watchdog stories that really delve deep.

Finally, the page gives you a direct way to send your valuable tips, suggestions and information to the Herald-Leader’s team of watchdogs. You can do this through an email link on the page. You can also follow the watchdog page on Twitter (@kywatchdog) and Facebook (KentuckyWatchdog).

Please take a look, and let us know what you think. Most importantly, keep those tips coming.

- Peter Baniak (pbaniak@herald-leader.com)