A friend of mine works for Gannett, which owns USA Today and heaps of local newspapers and TV stations throughout the country. Well, most of the local sites are horrible at the very least. However, the company is in the process of rolling out new designs across their network.

The Desert Sun site from Palm Springs, California is one of the first sites to get the facelift:

Compare it to the site of its sister publication The Californian — which will likely get its new design soon — from Salinas, California:

I’m not going to do a site review, but can you tell the difference?