# London Times goes Tabloid! Queen says, "Well, REALLY!" **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 1, 2004, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/london-times-goes-tabloid-queen-says-well-really/272395 "2004-11-01T20:20:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/london-times-goes-tabloid-queen-says-well-really/272395/1 "2004-11-01T20:20:14Z")
LONDON (AP) - To make sure nobody missed its big change from a broadsheet to a tabloid, _The Times_ of London told readers about it on the front page. On Saturday, a notice at the top of page 1 said, “_The Times_—the last broadsheet edition.” In going tabloid, _The Times_ became the second major British paper to move to the smaller, more commuter-friendly format in a bid to reverse slumping sales. For the last few years, sales for Britain’s broadsheet newspapers have been falling. Since November 2003, _The Times_ had been printing both tabloid and broadsheet formats, saying that sales had grown by 4.5 percent to 660,000 copies a day. The decision to go totally tabloid risks alienating some of the 216-year-old newspaper’s more traditionalist readers. But all is not lost for them. _The Times_’ sister paper, _The Sunday Times_, will remain a broadsheet. —I’m gobsmacked! If _The New York Times_ ever goers tabloid, I shall stop reading it, lest people think I am sullying my dainty hands with the _NY Post_. ---
**Author:** ![MysteryFellow63427](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e4f/32.png) [@MysteryFellow63427](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MysteryFellow63427)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/london-times-goes-tabloid-queen-says-well-really/272395/2 "2004-11-01T22:32:20Z")
Oh, the perfidy! _:: faints dead away ::_ ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/london-times-goes-tabloid-queen-says-well-really/272395/3 "2004-11-01T22:39:43Z")
I wish all papers would go to tabloid format. It’s a heckuva lot easier to handle than broadsheets, whether you’re commuting or not. How did “tabloid” come to mean “sleazy purveyor of questionable at best stories about celebrities”? I don’t think most people even know that the word _tabloid_ originally meant simply a different format of printing and – ummm, I forget the word but should know it because I have an MLS — how they fold it up? Apart from that, I’ve noticed that a number of smallish cities sometimes have tabloid format newspapers that are not sleazy, but the term _tabloid_ is so besmirched that it wouldn’t surprise me if such innocent newspapers could sue for libel if someone used that term to describe them. ---
**Author:** ![Jervoise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jervoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jervoise)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/london-times-goes-tabloid-queen-says-well-really/272395/4 "2004-11-01T22:45:56Z")
The Independent has been publishing in tabloid format since May. The Guardian will be switching to a medium-sized format next year. These papers tend to use the term “compact” rather than tabloid, to distinguish themselves from the red tops and other rags. ---
**Author:** ![Jervoise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jervoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jervoise)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/london-times-goes-tabloid-queen-says-well-really/272395/5 "2004-11-01T22:49:37Z")
Make that 2006 for The Guardian. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/london-times-goes-tabloid-queen-says-well-really/272395/6 "2004-11-01T22:53:42Z")
On the day the Independent went tabloid, the Guardian had a two-page spread which contained the entire day’s paper, in a fold-up-and-cut smallest-newspaper-ever version 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/london-times-goes-tabloid-queen-says-well-really/272395/7 "2004-11-01T23:30:17Z")
Oh, mercy mercy me Oh, things ain’t what they used to be No, no Where did all the broadsheets go Tabloid is the wind that blows From the north, east, south, and sea Oh, mercy mercy me – with apologies to Marvin Gaye, except he’s dead.