Jay Small digs into memories of an old Preparation H commercial and wonders if going tabloid is really the answer to the questions plaguing broadsheet newspapers.
I realize such solid physical comedy does not translate well into this journal. But the point that made that joke funny also applies to a current business trend: newspaper publishers considering changing from broadsheet to tabloid format to boost circulation.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved the tab format ever since I was art director at the Rocky Mountain News, which has been a tab seemingly forever, in the late ’80s. It’s easy to read, fun to design and just feels, well, bolder and faster.
But to look at a typical American metro newspaper, regardless of format, and think the most dramatic thing you can do to pump life into it is change the size of the paper itself? Is that the best we can do?
Interesting question. If part of the goal is to slow the slide in circulation (there is about 20 years worth of evidence that it can’t be reversed), the handy-to-read tab size may entice some nonreaders to pick up a copy of a newspaper. Of course, you’d have to balance that against some older readers who would see the retreat from the broadsheet as a retreat from quality.
Tabs are much in the news. Knight-Ridder is expected to switch some of its titles to tab later this year (the San Jose Mercury News is rumoured to be one of those). And American billionaire Philip Anschutz has launched the free Washington Examiner, a tabloid, and reportedly filed for the trademark on the name Examiner in more than 70 U.S. cities.
Here in Vancouver, we’ve caught up with some major cities in that we have three new dailies, all free tabs.
I wondered the other day if a trend toward tabloids, which started in Europe and appears to be drifting into North America, is not somehow transitional, a step away from the newspaper as we’ve known it — the all-inclusive, deeply-written broadsheet — as the industry struggles with its long-term survival. There are models for serious, quality tabs — the Christian Science Monitor comes to mind. And suburban community newspapers, published two or three times a week and heavily local in content, have built solid business models on free distribution.
I could see a combination of a tab, with its emphasis on quick hit news, and a comprehensive and intelligent web site creating a “newspaper” that would offer more than the typical daily broadsheet now does. And, technologically, if “digital paper” really is less than a decade away, a tabloid size sheet makes much more sense than does the unwieldy broadsheet size.
As Jay Small says, though, simply applying a tabloid “bandage” to the gaping wounds in newspapers isn’t any kind of answer.
TECHNORATI TAGS: TABLOIDS, NEWSPAPERS, JOURNALISM
