Elements of the Tampa Tribune's Oct. 12 redesign debut will be shared by parent company Media General's Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch and Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal.
The new look anticipates and facilitates the company's December consolidation of its copyediting and design departments at two sites - Richmond and Tampa - for its three biggest dailies. That change, announced in early spring, follows substantial similar consolidations among its smaller newspapers in 2009.
With all its print properties' editing and design functions consolidated by year's end, Media General said in April that it "expects to realize annualized cost savings of more than $1 million from efficiencies related to this initiative, starting in 2011. The company intends to use a portion of the savings to focus on intensified local news coverage."
The Tribune's main section emphasizes local news; a new, Trib2 section is devoted to state, national and international reports; a weekly food section was restored; and the Sunday edition will see some expansion.
Hired for the project, Ron Reason discusses the new design and reasons for it at his blog.
Reason wrote that owing to a tight timetable (five weeks for design and newsroom review) and other reasons, "this project did not emphasize dramatic 'reinvention.' Tampa in particular had undergone major changes in content, design and sectioning in recent years (some of which had been seen as unsettling by some readers), so drastic change was not part of the assignment."
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