redesign, reinstatement

With the Stranger's redesign -- complete with navigational assistance, about a half-dozen typefaces per page, and new iconography -- comes a blessed return of A. Birch Steen's column, still at the front of the paper, but now freed from the constraints of the table of contents:

... The lone bright spot of this redesign debacle is that it allows more space for critiques by yours truly; no longer handcuffed by the previous design (which allowed me to comment only on news and features), I am free to draw your attention to editorial shortcomings all over "the book," as they say in "the trades." Though this will no doubt come as a relief to those souls routinely published in the front pages, those miserable scribblers who have been hiding in the paper's arts sections lo these past few years should brace themselves for much scrutiny. The public editor is here to serve the public—a public that deserves so much better from its "only newspaper." (When, oh when, will that tired "gag" be retired?) Now The Stranger's army of grammar-challenged editors and fact-challenged writers has no place to hide. You have been warned. [thestranger]