Tag Archive for 'chicago tribune redesign'

Video: Readers talk about Chicago Tribune redesign

A first-day report from the upscale suburban streets of Chicago, home to the Chicago Tribune’s core readership. I went out to see what people who were reading the Monday Sept. 29 edition were saying about the shrunk-down three-section paper and the new emphasis on graphic design.

More reaction around the Web:

  • Readers speak up about the Tribune redesign at Gapers Block.
  • Crain’s Chicago Business surveys readers “Trib readers say redesign lands with a thud”
  • Chicago Public Radio has a podcast with Mark Fitzgerald of Editor & Publisher who says the sections need more cohesion.
  • Fitzgerald elaborates on exactly what has changed in the product in the E&P review.

    E&P: The change in the lifestyle/entertainment/comics section is no improvement at all.

  • Chicagoan Beth Kujawski blogs about the redesign:
    Beth: “It’s a tabloid that can’t bear to think of itself as a tabloid, so it’s still going to publish as a broadsheet.” But it’s a tabloid.

  • Photo District News notes the irony of playing photos better while at the same time laying off four photographers.
  • Sara Quinn at Poynter has filed an illustrated Q&A from staffers at three papers that have fresh designs debuting this week. The Hartford Courant, the Oklahoman and, of course, the Trib.
  • Chicago designer, Ron Reason, has a write up about the changes.
  • Charles Apple has more detail, pages and interviews of all the year’s rapid redesigns - he posts frequently.
  • Industry trade group, SND, has a new blog post up from Steve Dorsey with a slideshow and a video interview with Steve Cavendish - a fellow SND blogger.
  • The official Chicago Tribune Media Group press release - PR Newswire

Please add your reviews and links in comments

Share on Facebook Share on Facebook

SND Las Vegas report: Embracing the social narrative


Slide from Andrew DeVigal’s SND session in Las Vegas. Andrew is the multimedia editor of The New York Times.

Photo by Ashley Dinges

This photo by San Jose Mercury News designer, Ashley Dinges, is perhaps one of the most compelling statements from among the almost 600 images posted to Flickr and tagged “sndvegas.”

I admit that I haven’t studied every last bowling party photo (Below are more photo galleries from SND staff bloggers) but this one from Ashley is a keeper.

Why? If you want to see where the future is heading - study these intersections closely. Andrew’s graphic is telling on many levels. It is good at focusing on pro journos pushing content out there smartly but I can’t see any evidence of enabling what I call the “Social Narrative” (Community news tips, comments, UGC, ratings, embedding, et all). The narrative elements that I strongly believe also must be integrated in any new thinking regarding integrating newsroom workflows. I talk a little bit more about this after the video segment.

Redesign video report

I filmed a lot of material in Las Vegas with the hopes of editing them into non-deadline pieces. I have interviews, for example with the editor-in-chief of a wildly successful newspaper that is published in Moscow, Russia . . . and an interview with a student who won an internship in the famous SND INTERN competition.

The footage from those upcoming films are cool because they were produced away from the casino. One filmed at Red Rocks Canyon National Park and the other - on the Las Vegas Strip.
So what? Well, I wasn’t planning producing a fast film to Web to report any breaking news.
I wasn’t until some spot news happened. Jonathon Berlin, Design director of the Chicago Tribune splashed a few pages of the redesigned newspaper on screen at the end of a talk he was giving about planning election coverage.

Reporting this breaking news event reminds me of the time when I was sitting next to IFRA guru Dietmar Schantin in the Kremlin in 2006 when a Bolshevik protest erupted 30 feet from me just as Vladmir Putin was about to speak.
In other words, grab your small camera, turn it on and hope for the best. That’s where online video journalism can shine.

Sneak peek at Chicago Tribune redesign

Find more videos like this on Visual Editors

Moscow protest (from June 2006)

Embrace the social narrative

And now more photo galleries from visual editors who photo-documented their experiences from SND Las Vegas. This is a strong visual narrative, but I also trust makes the point that the social narrative (the participation of the audience) must be part of graphic and every future session on the ‘future of journalism.’

Martin Gee

Bridget O’Donnell

Ashley Dinges

Jim Michalowski

Colin Bridge

Scott Goldman

Kenney Marlatt

Matt Erickson

Tyson Evans

Tim Ball

Share on Facebook Share on Facebook

Interview questions for editor of the Chicago Tribune: Paper will redesign, downsize by mid-September

Sam Zell appears to be serious about redesigning the Tribune company this year and he has the editor of the Chicago Tribune, Ann Marie Lipinski, writing memos to her troops to follow the general’s marching orders about making dramatic changes to the paper and the newspaper company.
This is serious. When editors want fast action - they write memos. And form committees.

History tells us (And a visit to the shrine at Cantigny will verify) that The Chicago Tribune was once led by a Colonel (Col. Robert R. McCormick) with grand visions and the pecadillos that seem to accompany wealthy media barons - so issuing memos should come naturally to lieutenants like Lipinski who are now charged with drawing up rapid redesign battle plans under the shadows of the Colonel’s famous flying buttresses at 435 N. Michigan Avenue.

It has been a long time since I have talked to Ann Marie Lipinski - we once worked together a LONG time ago in the Tribune newsroom editing the paper’s Sunday Perspective section. So much time has passed (I don’t have her current phone number) but I’d love to talk with her and get her take on the company’s direction. I am currently on the road but easily reachable all summer. I even plan on being in Chicago the entire month of July so there’s no reason we can’t do a sit-down interview soon.

For the record, I first went to the Chicago Tribune Web site and searched for “Ann Marie Lipinski” to find her contact information.

This is the screen that came up.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3240/2598957408_cc1542411e.jpg?v=0

Is the site suggesting I have a better chance of contacting her through the site’s advertisers like PeopleFinders.com?

Arggh. I did find a phone tree online and the closest I could get to her was a letter to the editor form and the e-mail address of the public editor. So I fired off an interview request to both.

Here’s hoping she’ll agree to a proper Q&A. I do respect her skills and remember her being a journalist long before she became a Tribune vice-president. A Pulitzer-Prize wining reporter, in fact.

Odd that I could not find a copy of her memo on the paper’s Web site - only a link to the AP report that mentions her memo pen action. I gave up looking and headed over to Romenesko to find a leaked copy of her battle plan.

The paper’s Public editor Timothy J. McNulty makes no mention of the Lipinski memo in his 20 June Friday article on soliciting reader ideas for a redesigned, yet far smaller, Tribune. Yet clearly, he too, is acting on orders from on high.

It was actually in Dave Roeder’s Sun-Times.com article where I learned more about the task Lipinski has been handed. I learned of Dave’s article because of a Google alert I set up to notify me when Ann Marie Lipinski’s name appears in a news story. A name worth watching as she forms fast-action committees to redesign the paper in three months time.

Roeder writes:

The memo from Chicago Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski discussed the coming changes in a staff memo Thursday but didn’t say how many newsroom jobs will be cut. She told the staff that internal committees will recommend staffing levels within 60 days as they also evaluate what content to keep. Editor Ann Marie Lipinski set out timetables for decisions leading to a “rethought and redesigned” Tribune promised in mid-September. Internal committees, she said, will evaluate which editorial matter to keep as the paper downsizes and, by mid-August, will recommend staffing levels.

I guess what this means is that we might soon find out what the Chicago Tribune’s ‘Zell Number’ is for pages produced per journalist - a controversial measurement developed by the company’s officers to measure productivity per paper.

That leads to me my first question for editor Lipinski . . . What is the Tribune’s current productivity number?

Another question I have for her . . . How much of the paper’s design playbook is being written and tested in the new Orlando Sentinel redesign? (The first Tribune paper to undergo a rapid redesign and attempt new story editing and visual editing approaches.

Looking at her committee outlines I saw a lot of familiar colleagues listed. I swear many of those same names have popped up in her other major newsroom initiatives over the past 10 years. Missing now from the list are, of course, George de Lama, James O’Shea and her publisher Scott Smith.

The STEERING Committee
Bill Parker is overseeing the project.
His committee includes Lipinski, Hanke Gratteau, Jim Warren, Randy Weissman, Joe Knowles, Jane Hirt, Linda Bergstrom, Jim Kirk, Kerry Luft, Geoff Brown, Louise Kiernan, and Eric Zorn.

Begs an obvious question or two for her doesn’t it? What is the average age of these editors? And how long have these editors been in charge of your current newspaper?

Design by committee(s)

The news and features prototypes will be produced by Joe Knowles and his team of designers under guidance from two other committees.

–Jim Kirk is leading the news group, which includes Bill Adee, Rochell Bishop, Robin Daughtridge, Cara DiPasquale, James Janega, Mike Kellams, Peter Kendall, John P. McCormick, Dan McGrath, Flynn McRoberts, Jennifer Mystkowski, Mike Tackett and Joyce Winnecke.

–Linda Bergstrom is heading the features group, which includes Tim Bannon, Geoff Brown, Torry Bruno, Wendy Donahue, Chris Jones, Scott Powers, Sheila Solomon, David Syrek, Liz Taylor and Shaila Wunderlich.

Please chime in with questions of your own and I’ll do my best to contact her and set up a video interview with her to ask, face-to-face, the best of all the questions. Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, talked last year in Cape Town and was extremely candid with his on-mic remarks.

Share on Facebook Share on Facebook