How much will USA Today’s redesign help?

NiemanJournalismLab reporting:  USA Today unveiled its print redesign last Friday and its web redesign the following day, and it was much more than a mere touch-up. The paper’s new look (which is centered around simple, single-color circles as logos), was the subject of much mocking, including from Stephen Colbert, though Erik Wemple of The Washington Post told the blue-ball critics to give the redesign time.
Others had more substantive critiques: Charles Apple of the American Copy Editors Society said the redesign has been a great idea with great content, but horrible execution. Design consultant Mario Garcia liked the redesign overall as a colorful, contemporary look that still managed to make the paper more text-driven and conducive to long-form stories. He also gathered some opinions on USA Today’s influence on news design from several people in the industry.
USA Today’s website redesign was met with the approval of Poynter’s Julie Moos, who liked its emphasis on large images, horizontal scrolling orientation, navigation, and layering of information. Garcia talked to the redesign’s driver, Gannett’s David Payne, who noted that the redesign was about rethinking advertising as much as news, with a priority put on making multimedia ads more fully a part of the browsing experience. Poynter’s Sam Kirkland talked to the design firm that engineered the project about the influence of the iPad and the challenge of keeping the content uncluttered, and Business Insider also had a cool look at some of the other concepts USA Today was considering for its website.