LAT redesign: nothing to see

Not much to say about today's lite redesign of the Los Angeles Times. They added the color to the nameplates that I told you about, moved "Times Staff Writer" to the bottom of stories so you get less information at the top about who's writing, and added the Lee Abrams dateline for dummies. There are a few more indexes and references to the web, but otherwise the changes are subtle — and give the pages a more cramped (and frankly, less designed) feel. I think more people will notice that Morning Briefing has been dropped from Sports after decades as a fixture here (and on the LAT wire that goes out to client papers), replaced by a digest of blog items. Editor Russ Stanton's note to readers says "signature columnists" will now have a Wall Street Journal-style portrait in their columns, but I guess none of today's columnists — Patrick Goldstein, Helene Elliott and Jerry Crowe — qualify. The only illustration I found was of Stanton. And Goldstein and Elliott are described as staff writers, rather than columnists, in the end credits. Overall, my guess is that readers will be struck more by how thin the paper feels and reads, compared to even a year or two ago. This redesign is no game changer, and internally is being scored by some as a victory over Sam Zell and Chicago. No wonder Abrams wasn't that impressed.