The Orlando Sentinel is becoming … the Tampa Tribune!
June 21st, 2008 by Wayne Garcia in The Business of MSMWait a second, didn’t Sam Zell say that the news-ad mix was going to have to change to about 50-50?!? So how in the world is the new O-Sentinel going to achieve that AND keep its standalone business and feature sections? Not to mention sports, which rarely has any ads to speak of?
Here’s a multimedia explanation by the Orlando editors about the new design that launches Monday.
I have to say, for all the talk about change and inventing a new newspaper, the Orlando redesign is very old school. Same sections, A-section, Metro, Biz, Sports, Features. When is somebody going to try something truly different, really revolutionary?
(h/t to Journerdism)
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June 22nd, 2008 at 10:02 am
Bouncing back and forth ‘tween Orlando and Tampa, I get exposed to both papers. And the Orlando Sentinel sucks! The OS apparenly never wants to antagonize the local government or the tourist industry.
And my Pop says that reading the OS’s world and wire news is “like reading yesterday’s Tribune.”
June 22nd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
The problem with redesigns is you have the designers, aka the dim bulbs and the dull blades of the newsroom, attempting to manage them.
Then you have tired relics like Charles Apple leading the cheers for these weak efforts. Like the rest of the concoct-and-chanters, he thinks the people who see the flaws in these redesigns just don’t get it. (Never mind that all redesigns have failed to deliver a sustained circulation boost.)
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Just so much rearranging the deck chairs…. Sam, look ahead. That is an iceberg.
Besides, Wayne… business people with shareholders can not do anything revolutionary. It’s not in their blood.
Heck, if a local paper wanted to do something truly revolutionary — drop National coverage completely: focus on providing local news. Let their readers watch CNN or Fox for National News.
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Jim just said something I’ve been thinking for a while. I get my wire, national and international nees on the web. Maybe they should wrap my paper in the Local section, I might care. I appreciate great design, but big pictures of phones and other objects from stock sources seem to take up to much space and are not going to get folks back into the paper. Most papers need to fix the coverage and priority in reporting first, content drives design.