The Tribune paradigm shift begins in Orlando

http://orlandosentinel2.com/flash/thenewos/

One of my prime questions: Who is David Whtley?

 

Actually, I like this new look. Orlando was a pretty decent paper to start with - and yes, I know some people will be turned off by all the flashy color, graphics and presentation - but it looks good. Zell has to know this look can't be duplicated at every paper, nor should it be.

Another thing is page count... this isn't a big paper as it is most days, it's about 50-60 pages early in the week, so the overall size of the paper shouldn't shrink much.

In no means am I defending Zell, because I still think his overall plan to shrink newshole stinks, but here in Orlando it's not bad. They're supposed to get an e-edition shortly, so my hope is they throw open the gates and let people look at it.

 

Yes, it looks nice. But reducing the actual content in the name of shorter, more graphically oriented stories won't solve this industry's problems in the least.

Why do the people in charge of the newspaper industry insist on believing people have stopped buying newspapers for any reason other than THEY CAN GET THE SAME SHIT FREE ON OUR WEB SITES?

EDITED to fix my pre-coffee typo.

 

Nicely done.

 

So is it a tabloid now?

 

Pamphlet. Nobody has time for a tabloid.

 

Did they hire the designer who created espnmag?

 

Understand your meaning, here, but for newbies . . . believe that gent has left this mortal coil.

 

I'm mixed on it. I hate all the color and flash. However, I think changing the approach to story reporting/editing is admirable. And in a time of routinely disheartening industry news, it's nice to see somebody doing something proactive and ambitious.

However, all of it just might be akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Only places like Orlando -- with a staff of capable visual journalists -- can pull this off on a daily basis. What's gonna suck is the inevitable imitators that will crop up. Smaller papers with a fraction of the time and talent of the OS can't do this kind of thing consistently, and will end up looking like the latest redesigned clown college brochure in Wyoming (see the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. It's Bakersfield's toothless white trash stepcousin.).

I'm interested to see if this will make some kind of a difference. Unfortunately, I doubt it will. Because at the end of the day, it's still a bulky paper product with information the reader has to pay for. If it's all the web for free, then that's where the majority will continue to go.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

That design will look ridiculously dated and cartoony in ... oh ... about 18 months.

There's almost a fundimental lack of understanding on the part of most newspaper execs about what's going on here - it's not the design or the content or the approach that's killing your revenue stream, you dolts, it's the fact your business model no longer works.

Classifieds are gone and never coming back.

A huge chunk of your audience has moved to the web, where the content is free and convenient and the ads you do sell are worth a lot less revenue.

Radically changing the print product won't change either of those things, it will only drive more of your loyal readers away from the print product.

Many of the factors killing newspapers are beyond our control, but this - and stuff like it, starting with the Tribune "innovation chief" and his dopey memos - are self-inflicted wounds.

You want to "save" your business? Here's the simple bottom line: Adopt a defensive posture on the print product, i.e. try to milk as much money from it for as long as possible without pissing off your loyal readers. Meanwhile, pour your efforts into building the best website possible and attracting as many eyeballs to it as you can, because that's the only future we've really got. Yeah, video, video, video seems a bit silly - especially given some of the results - but it's much more a step in the right direction than this ridiculous redesign that'll only drive people away from the paper.