More on Tribune's redesign

Per Crain's Chicago Business... Trib is going from five sections per day to three, a lot like the Baltimore Sun. Front section has national/international news, business and local. Second section is sports, third section is tempo and features.

Paper's dropping about 40 pages a week, averaging to about six pages a day. I suspect each section will be thicker than normal, especially the A section. I imagine Sunday remains the same, but they never really said.

There are supposed to be little tidbits dropped throughout the paper next week. I want to see the product in my hands before I pass judgment, but it sounds like this paper will be too small for a city the size of Chicago. To have a 40-page paper in a city the size of 3 million is fucking embarrassing, but that's just my opinion.

Whaddya think?

 

I think I'd be switching to the Sun-Times if I was a Trib subscriber.

 

Can someone in the Chicago area PM me and send me a copy when they roll it out? Don't know how I'd pay you back (unless you want me to mail two quarters or a check for 50 cents), but I'm sure we can work something out.

 

It's Sam Zell who is fucking embarrassing.

 

New design to debut next week. Here's the latest look: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=31104.

 

No consistency between section flags. But better than the Baltimore Sun.

 

They want to take people's money for this.

 

At least the columnists don't have to do stand ups.

 

Public radio interview with the ME on the redesign: www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=29039.

 

If it's anything like the Baltimore redesign, ignore what the Tribune Tower suits say... the readership will greet it as a disaster.

The word on the street in Baltimore is the redesign is a fiasco, and the 3-section format is widely disdained. People like the idea of a separate Maryland section, which is what has been taken away. The 'features' section is a mish-mash of uselessness. Some entertainment stuff finds its way into the A section, other stuff is tossed in the features well. There seems to be no organization whatsoever.

And with the drop in page counts and push toward 50-50 copy/ads, there is just nothing in the paper anymore.

And that says nothing of the god-awful typefaces, graphics, and those full-body columnist sigs that have been widely ridiculed. In general, people in Baltimore just want their paper back. I can't imagine the Sun redesign will increase print readership, and I think it could greatly reduce it.

I would expect a similar result in Chicago.

 

And the suits won't declare failure, they'll call it a work in progress.

 

I could buy the 3-section redesign if each section was at least 20 pages. The Sun was what, 36 today? That's fucking embarrassing for a city the size of what, 600,000 in the city and as much as that, if not more, in the metro?

Look southwest, Baltimore. The WaPo has had to deal with some space changes over the last few years, but it's still a fairly robust newspaper in terms of size.

The jury's out for me until I actually see this paper on Monday, but from what I see so far I think the Sun-Times might want to brace for a round of calls from readers saying "how much is your paper?"