Last Updated: October 18, 2000
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50-inch
web
Getting ready for the 50-inch web before it’s too late
Narrow paper saves a ton of money, but the new format
gets mixed reactions from readers, so editors have a key role to play
By Warren Watson
Managing editor Dan Suwyn looks at his calendar, and predicts 2001 will
bring a different kind of space odyssey to his Savannah Morning News.
As the point person in his newspaper’s conversion to a smaller format
he sees turbulence ahead.
“We have broken ground on a new printing facility. So, in the next 15-18
months we will be doing the following: switching to DTI as a front-end
system; taking on remote-site printing; and adjusting to a 50-inch web.
“Looks like 2001 will be a hoot,” he quipped.
But Suwyn is not the first editor to confront these issues, and won’t
be blindsided as other editors have in the newspaper industry’s headlong
rush to adopt a new, narrower format.
“You have to be involved,” said Larry Olmstead, managing editor of the
Miami Herald, which won awards in the recent Society for News Design contest
for its redesign around the 50-inch web. “It’s an opportunity to rethink
the design and presentation of the product, and the editor should care
because, if folks don’t like it, it’s the editor they are likely to call.”
The 50-inch web is an issue that has been around for nearly a decade,
with the Toronto Star the first in North America (1992) to adopt the abnormally
skinny sheet. Most major Canadian dailies followed.
In the United States, in the wake of the recession in the early 1990s,
newspapers studied the idea, but backed off when newsprint price increases
did not materialize.
The issue reappeared last year.
In June 1999, William Dean Singleton, president of the MediaNews Group
in Denver, told the NEXPO trade show that his newspapers, including the
Denver Post (which converted in 1996) had saved $30 million in four years
by making the change. That sparked a new stampede toward conversions
as publishers were reminded anew that the savings in newsprint, the second-highest
newspaper expense behind labor, can reach the tens of millions at individual
properties.
The Newspaper Association of America estimates that about 300 U.S. papers
have now made the change. At a seminar on this topic at the America
East Trade Show in Hershey, Pa., in April, more than 75 percent of the
125 people in attendance said their newspapers were making changes.
So, American editors, who have weathered false crises from Kouhotek
to the swine flu, from Halley’s Comet to Y2K, are suddenly faced with a
disruption very real – and very much on their short-term agenda.
“It’s happened very quickly,” says Howard Tyner, editor of the Chicago
Tribune, which will make the conversion next year. “Editors have
a lot to deal with here. It affects the entire news report.”
Says Kathy Silverberg of the TimesDaily in Florence, Ala., “The newsroom
needs to take the lead because it is an opportunity for us to look at how
we can do our jobs better, that is produce an even better news report in
a reduced space.”
Just how much should the senior editor be involved?
“The decision to convert to the 50-inch web is not fundamentally a newsroom
decision,” says Brian Stallcop, editor of the Sun of Bremerton, Wash.,
which made the change earlier this year. “It’s a financial decision. Presumably
the editor will be at the table when the decision is made. Once the decision
is made, however, the editor should take a leading role in the process.
“Conversion to a 50-inch web impacts nearly every part of the newspaper,
from comics and sports agate to pagination templates. Your readers are
unlikely to protest. They might not even notice if you don’t tell them.
But converting to a 50-inch web creates a lot of extra work and uncertainty
in the newsroom,” he added.
Says Ed Kohorst, past president of the Society for News Design and design
director of the Dallas Morning News, “This web reduction thing is a mess.
The issue raises all sorts of design and production problems that are not
easily answered.”
In Washington, D.C., readers have complained of press roller marks on
pages as the Post did not reduce the width on their presses far enough.
In Boston, the Globe initially reduced pages on a camera. Hundreds
of readers complained overnight.
In San Diego, readers complained there was less news and more advertising.
Said Karin Winner, editor, “They said it looks like a tabloid, not a big-city
paper. It looks like advertorial. It looks cheap.”
In Portland, Ore., Oregonian readers complained about a new body text
type.
“We needed to update our look and the web conversion was the logical
time to do it,” said Portland executive editor Peter Bhatia. “The downside
is it gave our readers two things to complain about: ‘the paper looks different
and I don’t like it,’ plus ‘there’s less of it.’ My sense is doing both
at the same time increased the overall level of complaints.”
But editors everywhere have found that readers like the new size.
“They find the paper more manageable (pages easier to turn), more stylized,
less overwhelming, better organized,’’ said Winner.
Added Narda Zacchino, reader representative and associate editor at
one of the nation’s largest newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, “We got few
complaints, less than a handful. And a couple of readers said they liked
the smaller size because the paper was easier to handle.”
Surpisingly, few readers overall have complained of the loss of space,
editors have found:
“Frankly,” said the Oregonian’s Bhatia, “the loss of some space in the
paper due to the smaller web has been a non-issue. We lost about 6 percent
or so ultimately because we made some of it up through new typography.
If anything, our readers have benefitted by the necessity of tighter writing.
A year later, the paper still feels hefty and substantial. Of course, it
helps that we have and had a generous newshole to begin with.”
One thing is for sure. The myriad of design, production and other questions
have been more easily answered and disruptions minimized in locations where
the senior editor has been heavily involved or at the point.
And that means getting support and buy-in from the staff first, said
Tom Callinan, editor and vice president of the Democrat and Chronicle in
Rochester, N.Y.
“Our motto for the project was ‘people support what they help create.’
Educating and including the staff in the changes was essential. The web
reduction brought a need for considerable change to a news staff whose
culture is resistant to change,” he said.
In Rochester, staffers were invited into the process through an open-forum
board where they could lodge their concerns.
Presentation editor Dennis Floss was news liaison and project leader,
and established several committees ranging from total newspaper integration
of news, advertising and production to smaller concerns such as consistent
labeling of standing elements.
Floss held informational sessions with small groups and designs were
modified based on staff reaction.
In San Diego, Winner has focused a great amount of effort on easing
the reader into the changes.
“For the reader, their newspaper is one of the few things they can count
on being reliable and consistent,” she said.
“My rule of thumb was to ease the new elements into the paper as unobtrusively
as possible,” she added. “We did it in phases, a couple of weeks apart
at a time. Two weeks prior to launch day, I wrote a Sunday letter
to the readers, followed by a shorter one the next Sunday and a box on
D-Day two days later.”
Winner set up a reader hotline, with a line for questions to be responded
to and a line for general comments. The Union-Tribune gave them an
e-mail address to write to as well. On Page A-2, the paper created
a box noting changes were under way and asking for readers to be patient.
Winner said the paper received 900 calls, letters and e-mails in the first
three weeks.
A key leadership issue facing an editor is the question to redesign.
The Miami Herald chose to go that route. “If you don’t, it just looks like
you’ve shrunk. Readers feel like they are getting less,” said managing
editor Olmstead.
In Florence, Ala., executive editor Silverberg and Mary Peskin, the
design director for the parent New York Times Regional Newspaper Group,
chose to make modifications only. After all, the newspaper, redesigned
five years ago, has long been recognized as one of the world’s best-presented
newspapers.
“If your current design is strong, perhaps just a retooling will work,”
said Silverberg. “If it’s time for a redesign anyway, this is the perfect
opportunity.”
So, journalists such as Suwyn and Pat Yack, the executive editor of
the Times Union in Jacksonville, Fla., have watched dozens of newspapers
go through processes that did not include all departments – and stitches
were dropped. They’ve learned from others’ mistakes.
“This is not just a tech issue,” said Yack, who will convert next year.
“We’ve set up teams through the newsroom and throughout the paper to deal
with this. We’ll look at all the angles. We’ll go through a redesign, but
also consider a new feel and look.”
That has taken place in Rochester, where Callinan insists the paper
be as useful as ever, and in step with media convergence and the rise of
online news.
“We did not want to take a chance that readers would see the smaller
newspaper as a reduction in usefulness or news value. We also viewed the
conversion in a strategic fashion with long-term goals in mind, including
presentation designs that exploit alliances with the Internet and other
New Media,” he said.
That means lots of news layering – presenting stories in various degrees
of depth and approach – and links to the paper’s web site.
“The goal will be to find ways to better present news in a time of changing
reader habits and operational limitations,” said Callinan.
“Vigorous presentation is concise, layered and compelling,” he added.
“A well-cropped photo should contain no unnecessary picas, a package no
unnecessary design gimmicks, a page no gray passages of long-winded writing.
This requires not that the editor or page designer make all his/her headlines
small, or that he or she avoid all detail and treat subjects only in 12-inch
stories or 2 x 4 photos, but that every inch, every pica and every page
tells.”
Watson is an associate director at the American Press Institute and
former news executive for the Guy Gannett Newspapers in Maine.
