Chicago Tribune relaunches
Michael Gay July 20th, 2007
A month ago I highlighted the new Tribune Company websites that were launching, starting with the Orlando Sentinel. Thursday night the company relaunched chicagotribune.com. The site is very similar to The Sentinel, although there seems to be less “stuff” on the Tribune’s site. The Sentinel appears to have more video, more entertainment features, and a Your Neighborhood section that I don’t see on the Tribune’s site. The top story on the site has video in the video section, but it’s not available on the story page. That’s one of the things I praised in my previous post. This site doesn’t have the TV-feel I described before. On the positive side, I have never seen a newspaper site with so many blogs. I counted 31. The blogs do enable comments, and reading them shows that users aren’t too happy that the historic Chicago Tribune logo has been replaced. Hopefully the paper will grow into this new site. I was really impressed with what I saw from Orlando, so perhaps the Tribune just needs more time to get it right.
Disclosure: I worked against the Chicago Tribune for 4 years while at cbs2chicago.com. I am a huge fan of the paper though. I respected them while I was there, and I still do.
5 Comments Add your own
1. Chris | July 21st, 2007 at 3:38 am
Everyone across Trib — with the notable exception of the LA Times — will be on this new platform by the end of August. Orlando went first, then the Hartford Courant, then us and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in the same week. Baltimore went next, and Chicago just launched.
Look for the Hampton Roads Daily Press, Newsday and AMny to launch in the coming weeks.
So far reaction has been pretty good, about what we expected — but our blogs in Allentown are up 50 percent. (We don’t have 31, though.)
2. Tim Windsor | July 21st, 2007 at 4:58 am
Well, Baltimore has 27 blogs (baltimoresun-dot-com-slash-blogs). So we’re close. But then we’re in the family!
We’ve all come a long way.
3. ben alioui | July 21st, 2007 at 5:27 am
bonjour super le blog merci de bien repondre
4. Edward Padgett | July 21st, 2007 at 9:26 am
Michael,
You make the relaunched websites sound inviting, if I can break away from commenting on blogs I will head for and take a look.
I have all the Los Angeles Times Blogs listed on my blog, some are inactive as many writers and editors have left the building.
Always room for additional blogs on all sites to fill the need of users.
Edward,
Los Angeles Times Pressroom
5. thedetroitchannel | July 21st, 2007 at 2:16 pm
i was hoping LR would acknowledge the departure of veronica belmont from cnet tv.
she was quite good as its “anchor”.
and cnet tv is something local tv ought to look at as a model… many of their segments are a minute or less.
check it out using the handy link in the right hand margin of the lr homepage.
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