THE TITANIC IS SINKING AND OUR DESIGNERS ARE JUST RE-ARRANGING THE CHAIRS...

I said a few days ago that the recent redesign of the St. Petersburg Times was, in my opinion, quite modest.

Well, if you read the comments from the peers in NewsDesigner, they think it´s fantastic!

One of them comments is from "Tom" and it is less grandiloquent, but the poor guy is surrounded by congratulations and all kind of self-serving empty words (Great job guys, a thoughtful job, A huge undertaking and a really nice look...) and the only that he can say is:

Changes, in my opinion, I don't see any.

And there is also this very good one:

Oh, yeah. Now I see.

"City" is now "Local."

Then another point out that the last "revolution" in the US newspaper design was USA Today, and I agree 100 per cent.

USA Today does not get big awards from the Society of News Design (SND), and the reasons seem clear to me:

1. Has first class color.

2. Good printing.

3. Short pagination.

4. No "jumps" except for the cover-stories of each section.

5. The inside pages are well designed.

6. Texts are short and well edited.

7. Carries good infographics are there since the beginning.

8. They never "redesigned" the paper but just improved it day by day.

9. It is a "readers" oriented paper.

10. Has the same Art Director since its foundation.

11. It is the largest paid newspaper in the country.

12. It´s different.

13. Has an unique audience.

14. Does not compete with local papers.

15. And, well... makes a lot of money.

I really wish the best to the new St. Petersburg Times, but I am not sure that these changes will make any difference for an industry that needs more bold propositions.

Newspapers designers could have been in the front seat of this revolution but now it seems that they are very busy giving away thousands of awards, and telling each other how great they are.

I was in the 90´s I founded the Malofiej Infographics Awards, I was the first SND European director and an active member of the SND board of director.

I love newspaper design and I respect the great work of many of my colleagues.

They work very hard, specially in the US market where too many publishers and editors don´t care about good color, good printig, good graphics and good design.

But times have changed.

Many of the SND founders are retired or gone.

The SND annual workshop is now a sad shadow of what it was in the past, and more parroquial than ever.

Yes, there are exceptions.

Like Richard Curtis, the USA Today´s managing editor for design, photo and graphics, still in the daily battle, but as I said his paper is seen as a break in the politically correct US newspaper design world.

Let´s be optimistic.

Visual journalism still is one of the few solution for this industry.

I am sure that many newspaper designers will fight this battle.

We don´t need more awards.

What we need is first class journalists, doing first class journalism.

Not decoration.

And as always, remember:

They are not killing us.

We are.