Robb Montgomery

The Chicago Tribune has gone tabloid and the critic who was heavily criticized recently by the editor of the paper about the recent redesign of the paper’s redesign has published his first-return review

Spoiler alert

He likes it.

Mark Fitzgerald of Editor and Publisher writes:

The Tribune’s tabloid is organized better than its broadsheet version, which was redesigned in late September. The news/ad mix is undoubtedly the same 50/50 split Tribune Co. dailies moved to over the summer. But in the tab the news content doesn’t seem like an afterthought as it often looks in the broadsheet, where ads can appear to dominate editorial.

And the paper didn’t have far to go for role models it according to the article.

Speaking of the Sun-Times, the rival tab on Monday had nearly the identical look of the new Trib tab. Both papers chose a shot of Barack Obama at the Lincoln Memorial with president-elect having almost exactly the same expression taken from the very same angle. The Sun-Times illustration was credited to Getty Images; the Tribune’s to AP.

Read more of his review.

The paper’s new managing editor was the former editor of the paper’s Red Eye commuter tab free sheet so the paper’s investment in tab thinking may have been part of the company’s strategic plan.

According to sources inside the newsroom, the design of this tabloid edition was developed in two months and the newsroom added five production designers to the payroll to be able to deliver that tab product every weekday.
The new tab is priced at 75 cents and the Sun-Times costs 50 cents.

The editor, Gerald Kern defends the pricing in this video.
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Steve Dorsey of the Detroit Free Press interview his longtime friend at the Chicago Tribune, Steve Cavendish, about the new product in an interview at the Update blog on SND.

Back in September I interviewed home delivery subscribers about the redesigned broadsheet edition. If I get enough interest, I may head into The Loop and do a new Q&A with ‘TribTab’ readers.