"We all got it comin', kid."

"We all got it comin', kid." A quote from the western, "Unforgiven."

I just went online and checked out the redesign of the three newspapers, the Chicago Tribune, The Oklahoman, and The Hartford Courant.

We've been speculating for a month in our class as to how papers would go, I think we are seeing the initial stages of change.

I believe in one of our major class discussions Professor Cressman asked what we, who were going into print journalism, were doing if it was a dying industry. I said, "Magazines," and heard ripples of agreement from those around me. I found the following quote from the Poynter Online interview interesting:

"I think what we've managed to do is take the way that you're used to reading a big-city broadsheet daily and just sort of turn it on its ear and make it into a daily magazine about Chicago." Jonathon Berlin the Tribune design director said http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=151331.

Huh. I'm anxious to see how these "redesign" trial runs go. I really feel like papers won't necessarily die, they will change, adapt and each will have to find its niche. Whether that niche be the greater Chicago area, Suzie Homemakers in Utah, Jazz enthusiasts in New Orleans, or political junkies across the United States.

Papers are no longer the public's first source of news. I think more and more, people are going to the newspapers for the details on stories they hear on CNN or the Nightly News. Whether papers need to take magazine form (with glossy pictures and smaller page span) in order to survive, well that's an argument to be had on another day....