Why Are Newspapers So Cumbersome?

Factual Questions
1

Why is it that virtually all newspapers have such ridiculously large overall dimensions- they unfold to approximately 25" x 23"? Why must they all be comprised of separate detachable sub-sections, rather than more convenient chapters?? And why must all of the pages be loose, rather than being joined together with a few staples???

If you’re reading an article at the bottom of a page, you have to support the top of the page to keep it from falling down and draping over what you’re trying to read. If you’re reading something at the very top of the page, you usually have to fold the bottom of the page underneath, otherwise it’s too far away to read.

You don’t see any books or magazines that are 25" long. Nor do you see magazines with pages that are loose so they are constantly falling out all over the place. Why can’t they make newspapers more like magazines?

Thanks.

2

They’re very big because they’re trying to fit as much information and advertising onto a single page as possible.

They’re in seperate detachable subsections because it’s easier to print several detachable subsections and then stick them together.

The pages are loose because they have to print an enourmous number of copies, every single day, and binding would take far too much time, and would be a lot more expensive than the 50 cents or so that you usually pay for a newsstand copy.

3

Upon review, not much additional to what freido said, but what the heck.

Because then they’d be magazines.

Seriously, there’s a lot of information to be printed and displayed quickly and cheaply. Binding is difficult and expensive, the number of papers printed in a short time is huge. There are different sizes and shapes for newspapers, for example look at the tabloids (NY Post) vs a “real” paper (NY Times).

I think the standard paper configution is accepted by the public as the way papers are supposed to be. Although you have listed some issues with them, they also present a huge amount of info easily and quickly, are easy to read on a table, and there’s a huge infrastructure in place to deliver them.

4

Well, now that ‘tabloids’ - the more magazine-sized, more convenient papers - have given the word ‘tabloid’ a bad name, it’s unlikely thatbthe respected and traditional papers would switch formats to a tabloid-sized formats like the NY Post or National Enquirer.

Tabloid should refer to the format…again, see the NY Post or National Enquirer, but ‘tabloid’ is now synonymous with rumor and gossip.

5

Telemark touched on what I consider the main reason - nobody’s (or not enough people) complaining about it except to themselves at the breakfast table. Would stapling it/binding it/doing whatever else to it increase the sales? Not likely, since it would also increase the cost to make and the cost to sell. It’s all about profit, and apparently enough people accept newspapers the way they are, so there’s no real reason for the companies to change the format.

But yes, I wish they would too. Though I wonder how much longer newspapers are going to be around. It’s been years since I bought one, and then only for the real estate section. I get all my news off the net.

6

One thing to consider, as far as the separate sections, is that not all of them will be printed at the same time. In a Sunday paper, for example, only the news sections have to be printed Saturday night or early Sunday morning; the sections for arts, real estate, travel, etc., can be printed days in advance, since that information stays “fresh” much longer.

7

Actually, I’d personally lump the New York Post with the National Enquirer not just in paper size, but content…

But anyway, I think there is an element of perception (i.e. comparison to pure gossip/entertainment publications) when it comes to newspapers. I recall these sorts of discussions coming up in Chicago with the Tribune versus Sun-Times debates with the Tribune loyalists peering down their their noses at “that tabloid”, though I don’t think there’s really so much relevant difference in quality of content between the two. But many look to the New York Times as the model to be followed, and in spite of the easier-to-read format of the tabloid, I think that the perception of a big, cumbersome newspaper as the model has a part in over-riding practicality.

Any newspaper employees or owners out there want to comment?

8

When I used to live in Denver, I got the Rocky Mountain News, one of the two city dailies. It WAS formatted tabloid style, and I thought it was much more convenient. I often wondered why more newspapers didn’t do that, stigma or no stigma. About the only disadvantage was that it didn’t break naturally apart into sections to share among multiple readers.

9

If it makes you feel better, many broadsheet newspapers are slightly decreasing their column inches to make a slightly smaller paper. There is an industry standard of how big a newspaper generally is, but a lot of newspapers are finding it cost effective (due to the ever-rising paper and newsprint costs) to decrease it by on inch. It’s not all that noticeable to someone who isn’t looking for it, either. Unfortunately, the only example of a newspaper doing this that I can think of is the Rock Island Argus in Rock Island, IL. There are plenty more, though.

10

Advertisers like the large format, because it allows them to make large ads. Newspapers like it because they can put in more ads.

A tabloid is about half the size of a standard “broadsheet” page. Now, imagine the Sunday New York Times, Los Angeles Times or Chicago Tribune with the page size cut in half and then doubled. You’d wind up with 500 pages.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is now printing its Saturday issue in tabloid format, and what I HATE about it is that it doesn’t come in sections but in “chapters.”

11

But it wouldn’t be any thicker, because those big pages already count twice from being folded.

12

What’s a “chapter”? How is it different than, for instance, Section 5 being the Business Section?

13

THe Philadelphia Inquirer just reduced their size last year, IIRC, and I believe that the Wall Street Journal also reduced their page size when they totally redid their format about a year ago.

As said before, the reason for the size (and type of paper and ink) is all money-oriented. Most daily papers go for 50 cents each, and it costs maybe 35 cents (I believe) to print each one. Any other format would require more cutting and/or binding of paper, which would (as said before) greatly increase the price and printing time. As many newspapers are in some degree of financial trouble, this would be bad. Additionally, it would drastically reduce the quality of news reported: print time for a 5:30 AM delivery would need to be pushed way back by hours (ie, from midnight to 9PM). This would mean that anything happening after maybe 8 PM wouldn’t get published until two days later - a bad thing.

14

Publishing guy here.

A) the 50 cents you pay already doesn’t pay for the paper itself. It simply helps to offset the printing and production cost.

B) Saddle Stitching (with staples) would tear the living crap out of newsprint on an average day.

C) It makes money so why screw with it.

15

It’s just like chapters in a book. I have in my hands, today’s San Francisco Examiner, a free daily tabloid-format newspaper that’s worth every cent of its purchase price. The “Arts & Culture” section is pages 11-16. The other “sides” to these pages is mostly the sports section, which occupies pages 17-21. TV listings are page 22.

So, if you want to pull out the sports, you’re also pulling out the Arts and TV pages. Comics share a piece of paper with editorials, weather and news. Classifieds are on the other end of a sheet with news. The only way to pull out just one particular section is to rip the newpaper in half.

Compare this to the SF Chronicle, where news is Section A, Business is C, Sports is D, Classifieds are in F and G and so on. Each section can be pulled out without overlapping another.

16

I do too, but I sort of miss sitting on the toilet with the sports pages. Kind of hard to crap and read mlb.com with the laptop balanced on your knees.

17

Some background on the Rocky Mountain News tabloid format, which they adopted in 1942:

http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/140/0502tab3.shtml

That is from a 1999 article.

The RMN was a rather FAT tabloid as I recall - it had the level of content you would expect in a daily for a city like Denver. IIRC, they made some concessions for separating sections - they would print “chapters” in a sort of “wraparound” style, so that something like the sports pages wound up coming BETWEEN the pages of something else, but you could pull the sports pages out without taking the outer pages with it. Still a pain - you had to leaf through the thing to find the boundary pages of the nested “sections”, and pull the innermost one out first.

It was still an easier format to manage when you were reading the thing.

18

Man, I put so damn much work into trying to help that paper do something useful after it got bought out by the Fang family in 2000. They wouldn’t listen and now look at it. Circulation cut down by WELL over half and content in the garbage. I’m glad to say that I no longer have any relationship with that paper. On the contrary, I’m working with their largest competitor and am more than happy to do so.

19

Small town newspaper guy here. Our daily has been around since 1890, and over the years it has tended to get smaller and smaller (though always a broadsheet). Papers in our bound volumes from the 1920s were huge by comparison - 8 columns wide. Used to be known as “bedsheets.”

I’m home as I type this so don’t have exact dimensions, but I’ll check it out tomorrow and report back.

Some years ago, with varying newspaper widths, the industry decided to come up with what they called SAUs or Standard Advertising Units. Until two years ago, a standard broadsheet newspaper full page ad was defined as six columns wide (13 inches) by 21 and 1/2 inches tall, with a one half inch margin around all four edges, making a single broadsheet page 14 inches wide by 22 and 1/2 inches tall. Each column was 2 inches wide, and there was a “gutter” between each column. A one column ad would be two inches wide, but a two column ad would be 4.222 inches wide to cover the gutter between the two columns.

Then the big publishers decided if they trimmed the width of the paper by one inch, they could save a friggin’ bundle on newsprint cost, while keeping ad rates the same. This is no small matter for a paper with, say, a 500,000 circulation that puts out a 60-page paper every day, ballooning to a couple hundred pages on Sunday.

And once the big boys decide on that move, the ad agencies finally sign on and design ads to fit the narrower space.

We made the same move over a year ago to good reaction from our readership, who found it more comfortable to hold and liked the fact it was reducing newsprint usage.

Here’s what the new column widths look like

1 column =1 7/8 inches or 11 picas
2 columns = 3 7/8 inches or 23p3
3 columns = 5 15/16 inches or 35p5
4 columns = 7 15/16 inches or 47p7
5 columns = 9 15/16 inches or 59p9
6 columns = 11 15/16 inches or 71p10

Got that? there will be a test in the morning.

20

Hometownboy, may I ask what paper? I’ve probably heard of it :slight_smile: