News junkies and Globe and Mail watchers simply must circle April 23 on their calendars. The organization will unveil its redesigned newspaper, website and a rebranded business news website, ReportonBusiness.com (which presently redirects to the existing globeandmail.com business hub page).

Some excerpts from editor Edward Greenspon's Saturday column:

News flash: The Globe and Mail has just recruited 30 additional journalists.

What makes this news? Well, the fact that all around us, newspapers are shrinking their staffs and losing circulation. Pessimism reigns.

But our circulation, as reported this week by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, continues to grow and we embrace the future with enthusiasm. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. And on April 23, we will be offering a richer pudding. We will add a new daily section to The Globe and Mail, increase our coterie of specialist reporters, further integrate our Web and newspaper operations and launch a fully loaded new business and financial website, ReportonBusiness.com.

The most immediately evident feature of our changes will be a redesigned newspaper, marrying the long-standing authority of The Globe and Mail to a more colourful, vibrant, energetic presentation. But underlying this is an effort to present a smarter and more accessible newspaper and Web package.

At its most basic, journalism consists of two questions: What's happening out there and what does it mean? In a digital age, the former is often best communicated through the swift delivery systems of Internet sites such as globeandmail.com, globesports.com and the new ReportonBusiness.com. Newspapers remain anchored to the news -- otherwise, they would risk drifting into irrelevance -- but their emphasis must shift toward generating both original stories (through the quality of reporting, writing and visual presentation) and explanation (the whys and hows behind news developments).

And so we will be shifting the emphasis of the newspaper more toward investigation, interpretation and insight, rededicating ourselves to ferreting out matters of relevance that would otherwise remain hidden and situating these matters in their larger context. We intend to get closer to stories (the who, what, when and where), grounding our strong writing in equally strong reporting. In so doing, we will draw upon all the story-telling tools in our kit: from words to photos, from headlines to graphics and, of course, the wonderful play box of new story-telling techniques provided by the Internet.

Some disclosure: I work for CTV.ca News, which is part of CTV News, which is part of CTV Inc., which is under the CTV Globemedia umbrella -- making The Globe and Mail a corporate cousin. I also worked on globeandmail.com as a senior web producer for about 2.5 years, ending in February 2003.

It sounds like the bulk of the resources are going into the newspaper. The staff section of globeandmail.com lists 26 people; let's see if that number changes on April 23. However, will newspaper staff be contributing more breaking news "starter stories" to globeandmail.com before writing more analytical stuff for the paper? If so, then the website is bolstered by their presence.

I'll be interested to see what ReportonBusiness.com does differently and what happens to other Globe and Mail financial news sites. Do globeinvestor.com and globefund.com remain as stand-alone websites? How about globeinvestorgold.com, the premium financial news site?

Report on Business Television, a CTV Globemedia property, has recently rebranded as the Business News Network (bnn.ca). What will its relationship be with ReportOnBusiness.com?

Mr. Greenspon promises more in the coming days. I eagerly await! :)