Charles Apple

Sorry. This time, there are no photos. No jpegs to share. No portfolios.

Just a retirement.

Ardith Hilliard, editor of the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call announced Tuesday:

I am saddened to announce that Assistant Managing Editor/ Visuals Jeff Lindenmuth, who with grace and quiet brilliance has helped lead The Morning Call through four decades of change, has decided to retire Sept. 1.

Jeff’s artistry and deep knowledge of the news have nurtured this newspaper year after year as it has evolved through numerous journalistic eras. Jeff always has been at the core of innovation.

It has been quite a ride for a man who began his Morning Call career while still in high school in the early 1960s. One of his first jobs was in the advertising department, delivering proofs to advertisers up and down Hamilton Street. But he soon ventured into new territory.

He and Robert Lockwood, who went on to be a well-known newspaper design consultant/guru, were the paper’s first newsroom art department. In the 1970s, Jeff was the first visual journalist at The Morning Call to design Page 1. In the same era, he became a founding member of the Society for News Design (1979), an indication of his prominence as a newspaper industry leader and of The Morning Call’s visual boldness and cutting edge approach.

Jeff has led three front-to-back redesigns of The Morning Call, the most recent premiering in January 2002. In addition to these landmark events he has been at the forefront of countless other changes–the shift from a tab to broadsheet on Saturdays, the creation of Go Guide and of Home and Garden, to name a few recent examples.

Just as he went courageously toward change in the 1970s, so has he embraced the digital world, extending his unerring aesthetic sense there too. The medium has caught his imagination. He told me that one of his proudest moments was the creation of the Bethlehem Steel CD that accompanied the 2003 special section on the death of a legendary local enterprise. It was the challenge of doing something new and scary that engaged him so deeply with that project and with many on-line projects after that.

Likewise, Jeff has been a leader in the concepts that came out of the 2006 RADAR research–the rethinking of Page 1 and other changes that the research indicates readers identify as relevant to their lives. Jeff’s ability to translate his powerful news sense into design has been a major contributor to The Morning Call’s consistently strong readership and its connection to its community.

I also admire Jeff’s kindness, patience and calm. It might be his Marine training or it might be just who he is, but he never shows panic regardless of whatever chaos is going on around him. It is a trait I would like to acquire.

But his greatest gift to us has been fearlessness in the face of change. I know he will apply that same spirit to the next phase of his life. Please join me in wishing Jeff and his family happiness in his new adventure.

I got to meet Mr. Lindenmuth earlier this summer, when he dropped by The Pilot while on vacation. Nice guy.

Best wishes for an enjoyable retirement!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Job changes, News design, Newspapers, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.