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The Los Angeles Times won't unveil its top to bottom redesign until Tuesday's paper, but Tribune innovation dude Lee Abrams shared his thoughts with the staff. He sounds kind of lukewarm.
It will be quite a bit less dramatic than our other newspapers, but has some wonderful new elements. They got a pretty late start as their publisher Eddy Hartenstein just came in house recently. But with that said, this re-design symbolizes a "plunge" into the new world that undoubtedly will be followed up by continual evolution, literally day by day, week by week. As we've seen with all the other Tribune newspapers, the 'plunge' is the first step. Nothing more...nothing less. The real importance happens in the days and weeks that follow the plunge as the 're-invented' newspaper finds its footing and continues to improve and modernize. There'll probably never be another re-invent/re-design, as moving forward, it’s something that happens every day instead of every decade....The LA Times over the past few years and months has been a well publicized drama. A Chicago vs. Los Angeles thing. All I can tell you is that we are all on the same mission. We want the LA Times to succeed as the best, most fiscally fit and most successful version in its history. That's it. Los Angeles is a remarkable place that deserves a remarkable newspaper...that is THE Southern California news brand for another 127 years. It will. Like all of our papers, the pattern is FEAR OF CHANGE...then ACCEPTANCE OF CHANGE...then EXCITEMENT AND CONTRIBUTION TO CHANGE. They may be in the Fear /Acceptance zone. Totally natural. Just wait til the excitement stage happens.
Abrams goes on to say he's focusing now on reinventing the television side of Tribune: "Personally, I think that if New Tribune (TV print & online) could merge...The COOL of Apple, The SWAGGER of News Corp/Fox [and] The CLEVERNESS of Southwest Airlines...Our marketing would be quite amazing."