What 'Mea Culpa'? We're Proud Of Redesign, 'Trib' Says

By: E&P Staff Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern says the paper was not apologizing for its radical redesign in Thursday's front-page spadia reviewing the look after 90 days.

"Editor & Publisher was incorrect to characterize our letter to readers today as a 'mea culpa,' as Mark Fitzgerald did in his online article, 'Chicago Tribune: We Goofed On Redesign,''' Kern wrote to E&P Editor Greg Mitchell Thursday. "We're proud of the redesigned Chicago Tribune and the value it brings to both our readers and advertisers every day. Our redesign has been a tremendous success.

"We weren't apologizing," Kern added. "We were thanking readers for their input and assuring them that it mattered. That's what successful customer-focused businesses do."

Kern said the "reinvented" Tribune was intended from the start to be a work in progress "and we knew that continuous reader involvement would be critical in its evolution. We actively and deliberately sought feedback."

The changes to the redesign were "refinements, not an abandonment of the new format," he added.

Kern said that "voluntary sales" are up 17% year-over-year since the redesign was launched at the end of September, and that the paper lost "relatively few" subscribers because of the changes.

The E&P report noted the piece used a format of listing reader complaints with the heds "You Told Us" and "What We're Doing." Among the complaints were that the navigation was confusing, there were "too many ads," stories jumped to a separate section, business news did not have its own complaints, and the paper overall was "too loud" with big photos. While making some changes such as giving business its own section front and eliminating cross-section jumps, the piece said that much would not change.

The Tribune redesign was also defended by newspaper designer Alan Jacobson of Brass Tacks Design in Norfolk, Va.

"The Trib should respond to the legitimate complaints that made the paper more difficult to use -- particularly the navigation issues," he wrote E&P. "But the old Trib's front page was painfully dull. It has been less so lately."

In a separate missive to Trib designers, Jacobson urged them and the newspaper's editors not to "over-react" to complaints.

"Let's say your circ is 400,000," he wrote the Tribune. "With 2.2 readers per paper, that's 880,000 readers per paper per day.

"And let's say you've received 8,000 complaints -- which I bet you haven't. But if you had, it would amount to less than one percent of your readership.

"What company changes its product to satisfy one percent of its customers? Stay the course, or plot another one," Jacobson concluded. "But don't go changin' to try to please 'em."

Others, e-mailing anonymously, including some who asserted they were Tribune Co. employees, used the occasion to deride the redesign.

"Nice piece on the disastrous redesign," one wrote. "Of course, the entire project of remaking the paper was meant to accomplish one thing: accommodating (Tribune Co. COO) Randy Michaels' public promise last summer to investors that we would shrink the number of pages and reduce the number of journalists. Nobody honestly believed we were going to capture a new audience while retaining the old audience."

But Kern said Thursday's wrap was part of a commitment to delivering what readers want" that involves readers and advertisers as the paper innovates.

"Our readers place their trust in us every day, and we trust them to tell us what they like and what they don't," he wrote. "To ask for their feedback and then ignore it would be a surefire way to alienate our loyal customers."