USAT | In redesign, the question Peller would ask: you got new blue plates, but where's the special?

Reviewing USA Today's redesign in print and online is like appraising a restaurant's top-to-bottom remodel before the new menu is in place: The cool new layout makes it easier to move about, lighting changes create a brighter atmosphere, and the china (all those pretty blue plates!) adds a much more modern look.

Peller

But what's coming out of the kitchen is the same-old, same-old. Once diners have grown accustomed to the physical changes, they'll return to Clara Peller's famous question: Where's the beef?

In their defense, Publisher Larry Kramer and his top editor David Callaway are both on the job less than four months. Work on the print and website design were well underway when they arrived. Looking for a quick jolt to falling advertising revenue, they launched the new design before adding all the promised news content changes. Today brings the second edition of the new print edition, and the beta version of the site began rolling out over the weekend.

Unsurprisingly, the initial reviews are focusing on looks and, online and in digital editions, function. Those reviews are mixed, as is often the case when a newspaper makes big changes.

Industry consultant Ken Doctor's reaction comes closest to mine. "In a rush to do something to reverse USAT’s flagging fortunes," he wrote last week, Gannett and/or Kramer "decided to take one big public step. Change the look first — and then get to the deeper, underlying questions of identity, purpose, storytelling and content, all of  which are core issues with the aging product."

He continues: "Looked at this way, the redesign is a platform. It’s a platform to do better content, to do state-of-the-art customization and to catch up with the video wave sweeping its peers."

Blue plate special: the new logo

What Callaway said
And no less than Callaway is preaching something similar. Introducing the new design, he wrote: "The biggest brands are beginning to look at news not from the point of how it's collected and delivered, but for what it has always been in its most basic form -- telling you something new."

I think the online redesign is a big improvement over the one USAT has offered for many years. It feels more like a tablet application, the platform that's quickly being adopted by news consumers, especially young ones.

Of course, that was the paper's intent, notes Poynter Online's Julie Moos. In a very positive assessment, she described five key reasons why the digital redesign works for her. For an even more detailed discussion about the new technology, read the many postings in this Reddit thread.

Yet even with all these improvements, I don't hear anyone saying this effort -- underway at least since August 2011 -- is the game-changing leap in newspaper publishing from Sept. 15, 1982, when USAT fundamentally changed industry thinking with its full color, short stories and strong visuals. Here's why.

Kramer

Exclusive network is gone 
More than 30 years ago, USAT had access to something few other publishers had in order to create the first national daily: A network of owned and operated print sites and distribution operations, courtesy of Gannett's coast-to-coast chain of community newspapers. That presented a significant barrier to entering the market for any rivals.

But today, everyone can tap the network USAT is employing for this digital redesign: the Web. The industry will closely watch the paper's app-like design, and especially its integration of full-screen, interactive ads. If it works to boost the paper's advertising, down as much as 17% in the second quarter vs. a year ago, rivals will quickly adopt USAT's design.

And what about the beef?

Virtually from his first work day in May, Kramer has promised more "pronounced voices," although it's not entirely clear what that means. In an interview with Chris Matthews last week, he said editors will give reporters "more running room" to "tell the story their way."

As well, Kramer has promised what every publisher does: News will hit the web and mobile much more quickly. There will be a huge emphasis on sports as the paper takes aim at ESPN, Sports Illustrated and Yahoo Sports via the growing Sports Media Network. And coverage such as Washington politics will take an outside-the-beltway view, hewing to USAT's longstanding more populist approach.

The timetable for these news content changes: Kramer hasn't said publicly.

Usual suspects: Wolff, Brown

'Cheap, young workforce'
One of those more pronounced voices debuted today: Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair media columnist who will also now write a media column every Monday. His first effort out the gate is, unfortunately, disappointing.

He takes on an extremely inside-the-beltway subject: Tina Brown, the co-founder of The Daily Beast and now editor of dying Newsweek magazine. Trust me: Other than perhaps a certain resident of New York's Chelsea neighborhood, I can't imagine anyone needs more ink on Brown -- in Real America, anyway. (Plus: ouch!)

And yet: One of Wolff's paragraphs jumped out at me, and I imagine it might make Kramer, Callaway and Gannett CEO Gracia Martore a bit uncomfortable. Describing the industry that USAT now inhabits, Wolff writes:

"It's a world focused on the voodoo arts of traffic acquisition, cost control that depends on a cheap, young workforce that repurposes other people's content, and a boundaryless relationship with advertisers that blurs the editorial and commercial."

In the months ahead, we'll see whether more voices like that will appear on the paper's revitalized menu.