Note the exaggerated “Trib” in the flag at the top of the page, playing off the paper’s nickname in a hopeless grasp at hipness; the extensive use of oversize images, text and graphics aimed at the short-attention-span crowd; and the absolute dearth of actual copy, a clear nod to the fact that TribCo believes there’s money to be made catering to the illiterate.
All you need to know about TribCo’s approach to journalism can be found in Chief Operating Officer Randy Michael’s order, as quoted by Crain’s, to cut editorial output and staff at the same time it’s considering these comic book-inspired redesigns. It’s all about saving money and making things look cool, look more like the vapid RedEye free tabloid (above). The flossers in charge over at the Tower think this is the future of journalism: flashy graphics, celebrity-ized “news bits” and a sense of tragic hipness. “Content” replaces “stories” as the stuff that fills the (shrinking amount of) space between the ads. The theory seems to be readers don’t necessarily care what they’re reading or where it came from, so long as it looks nice.And maybe TribCo is right. Maybe they’re just giving the people what the people want. If so, this next decade or so is going to be pretty miserable. It might be anyway, with financial Armageddon hanging over us and common sense on holiday at seemingly every level of society. But without an informed Fourth Estate to provide context, check the power brokers and shine light into the dark cracks of apathy we will be left prone in the path of the spin machine. That’s not the way I want to go, but if the best I can do to inform myself at the local level is pick up some comic book version of what a newspaper used to be, or watch the local “Entertainment Tonight” masquerading as the local newscasts, how do I fight my fate? How does anyone?
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