Hollywood Dowager Gets a Face Lift : Trade papers: Daily Variety has a new format and some behind-the-scenes changes as well.

Daily Variety, the Los Angeles-based entertainment trade paper locked in perpetual competition with the Hollywood Reporter, unveiled a million-dollar face lift Monday. But while some hailed the new look as “boffo,” others said it might take some getting used to.

The publication--which gave us “slanguage” such as wammo, nix and pix-- “wanted to produce something which readers would find more accessible,” Publisher Michael Silverman explained.

“One of the few complaints we’ve had over the years was that the paper was hard to read,” Silverman said Monday. “So we began working since last April to come up with a product which looks much cleaner.”

Devotees of the 58-year-old Daily Variety will notice that the publication’s familiar deep-green logo--which helped distinguish it as one of the bibles of the entertainment industry--has been reconfigured and brightened.

Other changes include dividing editorial material into sections, such as news, finance and reviews. The eye-catching green is used for additional graphic elements.

“It’s terrific,” enthused Mike Russell, vice president of publicity at Orion Pictures. “It now looks more like a consumer than a trade paper, and I really like the use of photos.”

It is not just the public face of the paper that has been revised. Behind-the-scenes changes over the past two months include the appointment of a new executive editor, Stephen West, formerly an assistant business editor at the Los Angeles Times. There also have been warnings of painful readjustment from Variety editorial director Peter Bart--the man responsible for a radical remake of the weekly edition of Variety, published in New York.

Not everyone is impressed by what has happened at the daily. For studio “exex” such as Barbara Brogliatti, senior vice president in charge of publicity and advertising at Lorimar Television, it appears to be a lot of unnecessary upset.

“Some things have been improved upon, but some are also a little jarring--especially for those who have been reading the paper for 20 years or more and have got used to it being a certain way,” she said.

Despite this mixed bag of reviews, it appears that Variety--where until recently the reporters pounded out their stories on manual typewriters--believes that this is a good time to try to “KO” the Reporter, which is itself going through a time of change.

Though it has been described by some media watchers as “a rudderless ship” since the departure of Editor Terri Ritzer last month, the Reporter has no plans to hit back with a thorough redesign of its own.

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Robert Dowling said the Reporter would continue the evolutionary alterations that have shaped the paper over recent years.

“We will probably change the front-page presentation a little, but we are not concerned about what Variety is doing,” he said. “Yes, we are competitive, but that’s what benefits the readers and the town.”

Some people might think that both papers would sell just as well if they were printed on paper towels. Both are richly profitable and avidly read by anyone who wants to know what’s going on in the industry. Variety has a circulation of over 23,000, compared to the nearly 22,000 of the Reporter. So similar are the papers’ contents that on Friday they ran identical headlines on lead stories about an executive shuffle at Paramount Pictures.

Jean Louis Ginibre, executive vice president of Hachette Magazines in “Gotham,” worked for more than seven years on the Reporter and believes that Variety may now have gained an edge. “It seems to be going in the general direction of its sister publication”--the weekly Variety published in New York--”and aiming for a more hard-edged style of investigative reporting.

“If the Reporter does not act, it could find itself slipping backwards against an even more aggressive competitor than usual,” Ginibre said.

Both editions of Variety were bought by Cahners Publishing Co., a division of London’s Reed International, from family owners for an estimated $60 million in 1987.

How did Daily Variety celebrate its new image? With a traditional celebrity-studded Hollywood bash Monday night at the Four Seasons Hotel. Noticeably absent were members of the editorial team who, until they protested about a week ago, had not been invited.