Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog



	About happycreature[at]gmail[dot[com] [ BLAMBLOG ] Ed Locke's Grandpa Happy Creature Ms. Johnson www.flickr.com This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from blamb. Make your own badge here. [ PILOTS! ] Azerbic BlaggBlog Cityrag Clusterfuck Nation Daily Muse Dead Robot democraticSPACE Enter the Chapel estrojenn 50 Most Finn's Space John Gushue Panopticist Patrick Byck PAVED PezGirl Simple Splendor Raspberry Sundae TBIT [ A-TEAM ] AllThingsChristie & BWE Bill Doskoch Circadian Shift Daily Dose Davezilla Dooce Jett Superior Kitty Bukkake Sugarmama Tony Pierce [ TORONTO ROCKS ] Accordion Guy Alan Hunt Andrew Spicer Angie McKaig armchair garbageman Bacon and Eh's BlogTO Bored Astronaut Cellar Dweller Chip Tijuana Chromewaves Clara* Consolation Champs Biker Chick Dave Howard Day in the Life Digifox Easternblog freckle stof Help! Ice Queen indigoblog JBWarehouse Liz Vang Luminescent Lunerose Maria Marmalade moot point Nug Photojunkie Pony Pshaw Radio Weisblogg Raymi Riri's Braindump RobotJohnny Sally McKay Sarah Pengelly Secret Storm ShanghaiM Squiddity Ultrablog United Bingdom wainbows Warren Kinsella Zoilus [ ALL IN THE FAMILY ] Merv! Dad! Gillian Kevin! [ ORGANIZIZED ] GTA Bloggers TorontoComic Jam [ BEACHCOMBERS ] Confessions of a Monkey Good, Matthew Good, Jennifer Ian King Jeff Merritt [ GOTHAM CITY ] Explananda Lindsayism My Blog is Poop Rocketboom Yoon! [ ST. ELSEWHERE ] Blogebrity blogumentary Brett Lamb: Oz Bunny McIntosh Dust My Broom elanamatic Fred the Blog Go Fug Yourself Grrrl Meets World James Bow Little Lioness 72hrchik SKSmith Shelly Skillzy Tom Tomorrow [ 6 O'CLOCK NEWS ] boing boing Cursor Drawn! Fark Garlicster Metafilter Plastic The Register SciFi Daily Sexblogs Slashdot Space.com The Smoking Gun Zeropaid [ CARTOONS ] Corrigan Children of the Atom Fiona Smyth Maakies MacKay MNFTIU.cc Secret Lair Smell of Steve [ VARIETY HOUR ] B3TA Hoogerbrugge Milk & Cookies Mumbleboy Onion Rathergood XE [ RERUNS ] [ 2005 ] JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER [ 2004 ] MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER [ 2002 ] [ 2003 ]	Thursday, November 10, 2005 Eye Like It ... But ... Quikie Review: Pretty But Empty Eye Weekly's new design is three weeks old. It only took them fourteen years to come up with a look that isn't complete crap. I never liked the layout of eye, it never sold the mag as an urban weekly. But the new design? I love it. The new eye looks great. Before eye existed there was a weekly called Metropolis with a design that was sharp and urban. This looks good in the same way. It looks smart. Over the years, NOW has employed the terrible strategy of trying to dumb-down (witness the absolutely crappy Upfront page) and they've left the field wide open for eye to try and fill the smart weekly niche. And they should. The new design is a step in the right direction. This design also gives them room to grow. It's a starting point that opens up a lot of creative possibilities. There was nothing to work with before. One of the problems with the Toronto Unlimited brand is that it's so obviously a conclusion instead of a beginning. There are no possibilities with TU. BUT ... A slick, new look is not going to get me to pick up the weekly because they've stripped out most of the content. Eye serves the country's largest city, yet there's the same amount of writing (or less) than you'd find in similar publications in much smaller towns. There's not much more content than you'd find in the Ithaca Times and that paper serves a town of 40,000. So what's the point of picking up eye when you have three transit papers and NOW to choose from? What's the grabber? A pretty face? I don't think so ... It's a step in the right direction, but why pick up the paper when you can get all the best city coverage from a sharp writer like Weisblott? From the comments: MARC: Funny you mention Metropolis--because the goal there was to make it more of a "family" publication, geared to boomers with kids ... different priorities than the subterranean world NOW was obsessed with at the time. (It was a bit grimier than it is today.) They resorted to distributing Metropolis with Pizza Pizza orders before it died. When they started up at eye, the perceived audience was definitely older than what they're going for now. We can blather about blogs all we want, but the information and opinion-oriented sites aren't generally being read by those of undergrad age--and even a bit older. Their web is more about online diaries and instant messaging. The new eye seems to be catering to that crowd. Village Voice in NYC is having its own identity crisis with new ownership ... one of the things stated was that they're aspiring to go beyond just rehashing last weekend's internet news. They seem to be pretty conscientious of that given the kind of content at Eye (capital "E" now) that survived the overhaul. But it's hard to achieve much when writers get dog food rates--hence shorter articles, and fewer of them. Which works out fine, given how the revenues from things like personal ads and apartment rental listings are gone. She-males still seem to like ink and paper ads, though. Why would that be? TRAWNA: The she-males clients' wives and girlfriends can't do a History on a piece of newsprint? MARC: ... the hooker business has to get with the 21st century eventually. 12:04 PM , # , \|