I do not understand how this cuts costs. Are you suggesting it’s a scheme to reduce content while keeping people from noticing? That’s plausible, but roundabout.
If anything, it’s big pages that cut costs. You have to run your 48"-wide printer for longer than your 60" one and/or have more printers.
If smaller pages are about cutting costs, then what are the merits of broadsheets? Do people really find them more enjoyable?
It’s not about reducing the content - though that is obviously a consequence - but specifically about reducing the amount of newsprint used.
What makes you think that’s the case?
One advantage is that broadsheets come in multiple sections, so one person can read the Sports section and another the news.
Interestingly, though, some broadsheet newspapers have tried going to the tabloid format. The Bakersfield Californian switched last week. To address the complaints about splitting up the paper, they’re offering subscribers the option of a second paper at a marginally higher price. Very shrewd of them. Or stupid, I’m not sure which.
Our local paper (Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne, Indiana) just resized within the last year. Sections have been combined and we still have some pretty thin papers. I fear that the newspaper industry hasn’t seen the last of the cost cutting measures. I like reading the paper. It’s not always convenient to lug the laptop around, find an internet connection, log in, blah blah blah. I, for one, will be sad when newspapers go the way of high-button shoes.
I think you are assuming the same amount of content and smaller pages means more pages. Not quite. There is also less content, so you have roughly the same number of pages, and each page is smaller, therefore fewer tons of newsprint per year to pay for.
Most newspapers have a news hole that is based on a percentage relationship between advertising and news. When advertising goes down (as it has been for the past 8 years or more) your news hole has to go down. So the reduction in content is not directly caused by the reduction in size; both are symptoms of the same cause - reduced advertising content and revenue.
Roddy
Ok, so the people responding to me are saying that yes, it is about reducing content and not wanting to have thin papers.
Ok. But I still maintain that in general, big pages are more efficient to print and are cheaper (given same amount of content). The people in the 19th century cared as much about printing cost (and probably more) than we do today, and that’s why they adopted the 60" standard. The smaller pages may make a shrinking paper feel thicker and are more convenient to hold, but they come at a cost.
I don’t see where anybody is saying this. The newspaper sites have been very careful in reassuring their readers that they are simultaneously changing font and layouts to keep the amount of content close to steady, assuming the page count remains the same. The page count has not remained the same, however. It has gone down, because page count is correlated to the number of ads which are universally down for newspapers. And the number of sections to a paper has been reduced wherever possible, so that a standard four sections has become the norm.
Papers are thinner. Nobody is claiming other than you that not wanting to have thin papers is an issue. Nobody says that the purpose is to make the paper feel thicker. Nobody is claiming that it is about reducing content except where necessary. (sample quote "It’s not about reducing the content ") Where are you getting the opposite from?
Everybody is saying that reducing the size of newsprint saves millions of dollars. Fewer modern presses can handle the older sizes and so a smaller-sized paper is also one that can be run on more presses and so can be bid out for cheaper sums.
It’s all about saving money. Period. Nobody is saying anything else.
Alex, you’re missing the point. Newspapers aren’t printing the same amount of content. They’re printing less.
Most newspapers try to maintain a 50-50 split between advertising and “editorial content” (news, features, comics, etc.) Advertising revenues (excluding online advertising) peaked in the year 2000. By 2008, the amount spent on newspaper advertising had dropped by 29%. You can bet that translates into a roughly 29% drop on the editorial side, as well.
On top of that, fewer people are buying newspapers.. If you’re printing fewer newspapers, period, it doesn’t much matter how big your press is – you probably already have excess capacity.
Here’s the relevant article.
I’m well aware of them trying to stay in business. My office is across the street from the Chron’s HQ, and every so often, the wailing drifts across the street.
I remember a time when there were dozens of delivery trucks crammed into the parking lot when the paper was printed there. Now that production is in Fremont, (and done by someone else, so the Chron didn’t have to sink a lot of money into the plant) how long will it be before all that’s left in that building is the bust of Herb Caen and the Loyal Royal?
If this story is accurate,not too long.
As I mentioned in another thread, the reduction in staff is so severe that, where three floors used to be bursting at the seams with people, now they are moving nearly everyone to the third floor, in the hope that they will be able to rent out the bottom two floors to other tenants.
Sorry about the wailing, we’ll try to keep it down. You must be in the Wells Fargo building?
Roddy
I think that article is probably pretty much accurate, but they did win significant concessions. There is an outside chance that we might break even if we have a decent fourth quarter.
Good thing for us that Hearst is a privately-held corporation; if they were traded on the stock exchange, we would have been history 5 years ago.
Roddy
This is a simple geometry problem.
If they’re changing fonts, reducing articles, cutting out ads, whatever, it doesn’t matter. In the end you have some area of printed material (plus margins). They could use fewer big pages or more little ones. Why would printing more little pages be cheaper? The answer might be, “it was cheap to create wide presses but wide digital printers, like digital TVs, are actually disproportionally more expensive,” or the answer might be, “big pages are still more efficient, but people like smaller pages,” or “if we used big pages there’d only be 2.” Anyway, it has nothing, in the most direct way, to do with content, ads, etc.
Er, what he said.
But they aren’t printing more little pages, they’re printing the same number or fewer. If 5 years ago a paper had, let’s say, 48 pages a day at the 12.5-inch size, they’re probably down to a 32-page paper at the 12- or 11-inch size now. They didn’t add pages back to make up the difference after they shrank.
Let’s simplify. The numbers are made-up to make life easier.
Before, The New York Times printed 4 sections of 10 pages each on 22" wide paper.
Today, The New York Times prints 4 sections of 10 pages each on 18" wide paper.
That is a savings of 18% on paper. That’s why they made the change. Everything else builds off of this.
Content. Does the Times need more pages to print the same content? No. The same or nearly the same content can be printed on 18" paper. Borders and gutters can be made smaller. The font can be changed. Stories can be edited more tightly or cut to end a bit sooner. Some content, like stock prices, can be moved to the web. Ad sizes can be changed. There are a zillion tricks.
Printing price. Is it cheaper to print narrower paper? In the long run, yes. Although there can be a cost for retrofitting current presses, most newer presses can handle narrower paper better than the wider older pages. If more presses can handle the printing, then there is more competition for outsourcing the printing at a lower price. This may obviate the need to retrofit the older presses entirely. It may allow for more presses to print to paper at a wider variety of sites, allowing for more efficient and cheaper distribution. Many kinds of savings come into play.
Thickness. Are fewer pages being printed than before? Almost certainly yes. This has nothing to do with paper size, but with the shrinking ad base. The fewer ads, the fewer pages printed. This is an iron law of newspapers. This would hold true no matter the width of the pages. However, the savings are a constant. Every page printed is now 18% cheaper. The fact that fewer pages would be printed anyway doesn’t matter. It’s now the page count savings plus 18%.
Is this a cabal to deprive people of news? No. The rising cost of newsprint has been a constant source of articles in newspapers for many years. You probably would have noticed that if you ever read a newspaper. Just as more expensive steel causes rising prices for everyone in the auto industry, which is switching over to more plastic parts as a consequence, rising paper prices causes all newspapers to use less paper or move content to the internet.
Is there anything I have left out?
A key concept alluded to above that bears repeating: It’s not purely a geometry question, because newspaper content quantity is malleable. There are a million graphics tricks to squeeze more words and ads into fewer square inches, and there are a million ways to spread them out if you’re thin on content for the day, too. Also, quite a lot of content that is available to go in a paper is routinely not used. Conversely, you tend to see more filler on slow news days. So, up to a point, a smaller page may not mean a proportional change in meaningful content quantity – that is, the papers’ marketers are not *necessarily *being dishonest in claiming they have the same content in a smaller package.