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The Tribune paradigm shift begins in Orlando

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Simon_Cowbell, Jun 20, 2008.

  1. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    Because editors want their bosses to believe they're accomplishing something, and something big and tangible demonstrates that more than something incremental. But to readers it's like the parent who makes a grand gesture every Christmas and ignores the kid the rest of the year.

    They wind up with the gradual nip-and-tuck anyway. You pay some design guru big bucks to come up with a new look -- and I don't disagree that it may be unrealistic -- and then page designers think they know better and bit by bit stray from the design stylebook. A few months later you wind up with Frankenstein's monster again -- body parts from multiple design graveyards and little resemblance to the creator's vision.
     
  2. beefncheddar

    beefncheddar Guest

    Overall, it's better than a hot poker in the ass ... but just barely.
     
  3. Dickens Cider

    Dickens Cider New Member

    Don't forget the design gurus who charge exorbitant per-day fees, and spend a week vacationing because they want to "get a feel for the city". ::)
     
  4. VJ

    VJ Member

    One additional thing I want to add about this -- Not enough papers think about the printing and legibility aspect when undergoing a redesign like this. If the registration is so terrible you can't make out the faces and the color in the section mastheads bleeds so badly you can't make anything out, then it's a failure regardless of how good the PDFs look.

    The smartest thing I've seen a newspaper do in recent years came out of Kansas City, where they invested in a brand new press before undergoing a redesign that put color in the nameplates and incorporated screens. I've only seen a few editions of the Star in person, but none of them have had poor registration.

    Doing a redesign without improving or at least taking the presses into consideration is like launching a new website that never loads properly.
     
  5. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    Content is king. What is it about a re-design that will either boost circulation or increase ad reveue if people aren't driven to read what's in the paper? You've got to give them fascinating stories, a daily surprise or three, some real personalities as columnists and feature writers and hard-hitting news stuff that affects their lives or at least gets them talking to each other.

    Re-design is taking the packaging from cardboard box to blister pack. Meanwhile, staff cuts produce a chintzier widget.
     
  6. Shark_Juumper

    Shark_Juumper Member

    This is in the same school of thought as VJ:

    http://www.kencarpenter.com/
     
  7. VJ

    VJ Member

    I don't think you'll find many designers who think a redesign without putting the content first is a worthwhile endeavor. Are they some? Sure. But while I might not be crazy about the color screens and a few other things, at least Orlando realizes that doing a better job of promoting and marketing your best work, whether its your columnists or whatever, has to be #1.
     
  8. 2muchcoffeeman

    2muchcoffeeman Well-Known Member

  9. steveu

    steveu Well-Known Member

    I look at it this way. If this redesign proves to be completely a failure with the citizens of central Florida, it might give the Trib bean-counters reason to pause before moving forward.

    Then again, this IS Zell we're talking about here, so he may well pull a Stewie Scott and say "man, fuck those guys"...
     
  10. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    Question: How does one measure "success" or "failure" of a redesign? Every redesign, best I can tell, results in basically the same percentage of design gurus trumpeting the wonder and the same percentage of angry readers threatening to cancel their subscriptions (at least temporarily). Over time, the circulation figures, generally speaking, stay about the same and follow the trends of similarly sized papers nationwide.

    Case in point: Orlando, which has essentially redesigned three times since 2000. It is no better or worse off, circulation-wise, than pretty much every 150K-350K paper during that time period.

    Redesigns are tremendous ego-boosts for the participants. I've not seen much evidence over the years that the readers (save for the chronic complainers who'll never be satisfied anyway) give a crap one way or the other.
     
  11. 2muchcoffeeman

    2muchcoffeeman Well-Known Member

    Brass Tacks Design took a look at the prototype last week, and declares it to be not as good as the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle in Cheyenne.

    http://www.brasstacksdesign.com/orlando_sentinel_redesign.htm

    Damn ... if you're getting bitch-slapped by the WTE, it must be bad. (Although admittedly the new WTE looks a lot better than it did before, and vastly better than it was a decade ago.)
     
  12. OnTheRiver

    OnTheRiver Active Member

    Atrocious.
     
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