Who needs page designers?

Have you seen the newly redesigned, or perhaps I should say undesigned, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Take a look and try to hold on to your lunch.
It looks like the editor's high school graduate nephew is laying it out. No depth. No clear story hierarchy. Nothing to catch the eye. It is a pointless collage of words, heads and a couple of generic pictures. Looks like the AJC is throwing in the towel on the print product. First it was copy editors who became expendable (who needs spelling, grammar and fact checking?) and now it's page designers (who needs news as an art form?) Would somebody cover this abortion with a white sheet?

From the for what it's worth (not much) department

A piece of information that a couple of years ago would have been heralded as proof of newspapers' relevance, a Nielsen report showing better than 73 million visitors to newspaper Web sites in the first three months of the year, will no doubt now draw a collection of yawns.
Round after round of cost-cutting, layoffs, increased workloads and dire news has taken the umph out of most newsrooms. The kind of ideas that once were bandied about at weekend confabs and daily editorial meetings has been replaced with the yawning ennui, a result of resignation to a seemingly inevitable future.