Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander is defending his newspaper’s use of a Bears helmet in the nameplate from a volley fired by Rick Morrissey, columnist for the “jacket-required, phony-laden cruise ship known as the Chicago Tribune.”

This detail, Morrissey wrote, is disgusting because it shows “the paper is rooting for the boys in blue and orange to get to the Super Bowl in Miami,” and “[p]andering to the emotions of fans is not our job in journalism.”

Me, I call it newspaper design.

The Sun-Times, of course, has never shied away from messing about with the flag.

>Root, root, root for home team? It’s not our job [Chicago Tribune]
>Other ship’s argument just doesn’t float [Chicago Sun-Times]

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Reaction abounds to the new LAT design. In addition to the comments from the fine readers of this blog, Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog (Drum lives in the L.A. area) says it’s “exactly the look of the Times’ corporate parent, the Chicago Tribune. So now the Times looks like every faceless second-tier metro daily in the country. Yippee.” His commenters mostly go negative as well.

Kevin Roderick’s L.A. Observed says “I liked the Sunday page better when I could only see the upper half. Opened full it has too many competing fonts for my taste and a personality that screams cacophony rather than edited order.”

Designer Jim Coudal says it’s “lovely” and calls the multiple decks on the lead story “A step forward that comes from looking backwards.”

More comments on the LAT’s Opinion L.A. blog and on this L.A. Voice post. Some are upset at the reduction from seven stories to four on Page One (you’ll note today’s front, above, has six). The inevitable USA Today comparisons also arise.

My favorite comments so far: “Headlines, in the main section no less, where most of the words aren’t even capitalized? That’s the very essence of second-rate.” and “The front page looks like it can kick more ass than before. And in a newspaper, I think that’s a good thing.”

On the other coast, the St. Pete Times published a bunch of the more than 4,000 responses they got to its redesign today. In response to comments, the paper is tweaking some things, including going to a heavier weight of Brown behind the color screens and making some changes to puzzles and the weather page.

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A redesigned front page and A-section of the Los Angeles Times dropped today, with some bold new typography, more breakouts and some other changes. News Design Director Michael Whitley graciously favored me with some details.

The new design was created by LAT Creative Director Joseph Hutchinson. It continues the work done in 2002 on the features sections and will migrate to the California, Business and Sports sections in the first quarter of next year.

Typographically, the lead headline (for 2-columns or bigger) is Titling Gothic Compressed light or medium. The headline for one column leads or one column news stories above the fold is LA Gothic Bold Extra condensed (custom draw of Titling Gothic). Serif headlines are LA Headline and LA Headline bold, which is a custom draw of Kis).

Other new things are large skyboxes for weekend edition (above), the bulldog/early Sunday edition that is out Saturday, and smaller ones for Sunday final. No skyboxes for the rest of the week.

Headlines are down-style instead of the traditional Up Style.

There’s a new graphics pallet and some screened colors for boxes and breakouts on the inside.

Here’s the A1 note from Editor Dean Baquet (couldn’t find it online):

Starting today, you will notice major changes in the appearance of the Los Angeles Times. On Sundays, pictures at the top of the page will highlight stories and sections inside. Headlines will come in a greater variety of styles and sizes. On inside pages, more boxes and graphics will offer background on major news stories. On weekdays, the changes are even more pronounced. Column One, long a showcase for The Times’ best story-telling, will be presented more dramatically. And the weekday and Saturday editorial pages will move from the California section to the main news section. These changes will highlight our best work, make the paper more visually engaging and help readers find whatever interests them throughout the paper. You will see more changes in the coming months, all the result of much study of what our readers have told us they want from The Times.
DEAN BAQUET, Editor

Here are some inside A pages from today’s paper:

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Here are today’s section fronts from the St. Pete Times, which launched its redesign today.

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The St. Pete Times unveils its new design tomorrow morning, but here, thanks to Assistant Managing Editor/Presentation Patty Cox is a look at a recent crop of before-and-after prototypes. Cox writes:

Tomorrow’s St. Petersburg Times will have a vibrant, colorful new look. The mission of our new design was to combine our rich tradition of journalistic service with some fresh ways of keeping Tampa Bay residents “in the know” while respecting their time. The improvements to the newspaper are the most sweeping in a decade. They include more than a dozen new features, including two new Sunday sections, and a conversion to the 50-inch web.

Here’s a guide to the new look.

In mentioning the $25 million spent on press upgrades and other improvements, Times CEO and Editor Paul Tash extols the Times’ independence from Wall Street.

The capital investments leading up to the new look were a lot to bite off, but they might have been more difficult elsewhere. Most newspapers are owned as part of big public companies. With shareholders pressing for quarterly profits, they have a hard time looking past the problems of the moment to the possibilities that lie ahead.

The Times, on the other hand, is an independent newspaper, one of the few remaining in American journalism. Like any other business, we like profits, too, and we’re on the prowl against needless expense. But we’re also willing to spend a buck today, even if the payoff won’t come right away.

The venerable Zurich and New Century Schoolbook are gone in favor of Font Bureau’s Miller Daily, Shinn Type’s Brown Gothic, Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Chronicle Display and Christian Schwartz’s Stag.

More pages after the jump.

>At the Times, we’re betting on the future [St. Petersburg Times]

>The New Look [St. Petersburg Times]

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It’s only been on the street a few weeks, but News International’s thelondonpaper has already suffered a serious wound. And it’s self-inflicted. CR Blog reports that on Monday the paper sold a wrapper around the paper that used a fake front page, created by Channel 4’s in-house ad agency, 4creative, to sell the airing of their controversial film “Death of a President.”

4creative’s execution deliberately mimics the poster-style front pages that have become the norm for reporting major events in the press. The media savvy may have instantly made the connection between the front page image and More4’s posters and enjoyed the conceit, but many others would not.

>Breaking News [CR Blog]

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The always-provocative Alan Jacobson says the old rules don’t work for newspapers anymore, and he’s got some new ones:

1 Get real about the Internet

2 Tie journalists’ pay to circulation

3 Ignore your loyal readers

4 Stop running news stories

5 Feed the cash cow

6 Drop the price

7 Solve the online revenue riddle

8 Promote as if success depends upon it

9 Join hands and sing Kumbaya

Not much I can find to disagree with there. My only nit would be that I don’t know that I’d be putting a lot of priority on boosting circulation of the daily print product at this point. That seems like a sucker’s game. I just don’t see the downward trends reversing. At this point it’s more about managing the losses while we change it from the “core product” into something entirely different (see No. 4).

But again, that’s a nit. Alan’s got some good stuff there. Time to stop thinking about evolving and actually start revolutionizing things.

The job prospects for scribes were pretty bleak after Gutenberg. Our future could be just as bleak unless we act quickly and decisively.

Word. Now get crack-a-lackin.

>New Rules for Newspapers [Brass Tacks Design]

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St. Petersburg Times Executive Editor Neil Brown previews the long-awaited Oct. 16 redesign of the paper today. He says the changes include narrowing the page width, “More news summaries and graphics to keep you ‘in the know,’” and more references to content on the Web.

Also in Florida redesign news, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel debuted some changes last Sunday. Nicole Bogdas has the details.

>For your Times, a new look [St. Petersburg Times]
>Sun-Sentinel's new look [Nicole Bogdas @ Visual Editors]

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Here are some of today’s pages from Norfolk’s new free tab, Link, courtesy of design director David Putney. Here’s an 11-page PDF (5.9MB) that includes these pages.

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The Virginian-Pilot launched its free 18-34 tabloid today, called Link. David Putney writes at Visual Editors:

My thought in designing protoypes was that the newspaper form itself looks tired to young people. They are used to seeing things like ESPN the Magazine, Cargo and Real Simple. Compared with that, newspapers looked as frumpy as a Buick Skylark. My goal was a magazine look. One thing that I have said a lot is that if we are going to be truly innovative, we can't do what has come before.

Our design philosphy is simple: large, colorful photos as dominent images. Quick, short, tightly edited stories. Conversational style. I had a poster at SND that said "We don't do boring ever." Maybe that's an exaggeration. We just try to cut the boring down to manageable levels. In other words, the dull stories that you wish you could cut down to six inches, well, we actually do.

More pages here.

Update 10/6: Some Friday pages here.

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Los Angeles Times publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson has been pushed out by the Tribune Co. They've asked Editor Dean Baquet to stay on. Reports say he hasn't decided, but L.A. Observed says the newsroom rumor is that he's been offered a top job at the Washington Post. Stay tuned to Romenesko and L.A. Observed for updates and all the leaked internal e-mails.

Update: Baquet says he's staying.

Patrick Burgoyne at Creative Review’s blog notes that London’s Proud Galleries will hold an exhibition of front pages from the British tab The Sun.

This was graphic design that epitomised an era in British history: Brash, brutal, utterly tasteless. To its supporters it was wonderful, knockabout fun, and anyone who didn’t see it as such was a killjoy leftie — and probably a lesbian to boot.

The show starts Oct. 12.

>The (Graphic) Power of the Press [CRBlog]

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