Innovation guy rocks!

That would be Tribune Co.'s Lee Abrams, who has been doing so many interviews about how he plans to change the place that you have to wonder how much time there's left for any innovatin'. His latest Q&A pops up in I Want Media (via Romenesko), where he tells Patrick Phillips that "information is the new rock 'n' roll. There's a real opportunity to do to news and information what rock did to music many years ago - get in sync the pulse of America with a whole new attitude and spirit." Abrams is credited with inventing album rock - regarded as the first successful FM format – and he gave Howard Stern his first major market job. Here's a bit more.

IWM: You are Tribune's first-ever chief innovation officer. What does that mean?

Abrams: I'm here to help everybody get into the innovation frame of mind and challenge the way things have been done. Newspapers and television have been around for a long time. There are opportunities to come up with new angles.

IWM: You have a strong background in radio. How will that help you in newspapers?

Abrams: The principles of winning are the same in just about every media. Radio is good training for anything, even television, because it continually reinvents itself. Radio was written off as dead back in the early '50s when television became popular. It reinvented itself and entered a new golden age. A lot of the principles in turning users into fans that apply to radio probably apply to the other media.

IWM: The Wall Street Journal reported that you have floated some provocative ideas for reviving Tribune newspapers, like front pages primarily composed of colorful maps. Can you talk about that?

Abrams: Well, that was sort of off the cuff. I was looking at newspaper front pages from 1938 through to 2008. Put them all next to each other and they pretty much look the same. Meanwhile, there've been inventions like TV and cellphones and computers. Yet, the newspaper front page hasn't changed. I was just throwing out a whole bunch of ideas. What if the front page was all maps with little icons to different stories? Again, that wasn't like a directive, it was just throwing out some thoughts, instead of holding the front page sacred.

IWM: Any other thoughts about newspapers?

Abrams: I was reading a paper the other day, and it just said: "South Side Man Shot." If this was supposed to be real local you'd think they'd have a picture of the street corner where he was shot and show the south side exactly where it took place. Sometimes you'll read about Paris Hilton and Iraq on the same page. That kind of junk culture kinds of blurs the real news. The celebrity thing should be isolated into its own section. The general TMZ-type stuff probably needs to be its own little area in the paper.

Actually, that last idea isn't half-bad. Hey, I dig this guy!