Give My Regards to Broadsheet

Tabloids continue to batter their bigger bretheren worldwide, according to The Economist:

Broadsheets are mostly seeing their circulation slowly dwindle as older readers die and young people choose other sources for news and entertainment. They are also facing tough new competition from free commuter tabloids such as those published by Metro International, a Swedish firm. The trend is not entirely new. Spain has no broadsheets left at all, and in Italy Monrif Group switched its three leading papers, in Milan, Florence and Bologna, to tabloid format in 2001.

At Britain's Independent, total circulation has risen by about 15% from last year thanks to its small edition. This month it dropped its broadsheet edition altogether. As many as 30 papers from around the world are thinking about doing something similar, according to Jim Chisholm at the World Association of Newspapers.

Meanwhile, new titles keep springing up everywhere you look; on a recent weekend in Palm Springs, I encountered a snappy little something called The D.

Comments

[garym]

It may be worth mentioning that although "tabloid" is often a term of denigration, it properly refers to a page format (and the post under discussion uses it correctly that way).

[Will]

I live in Chicago and subscribe to the Tribune... it's a hell'uva a lot harder to handle on the bus or L compared to the Sun-Times or one of the freebies like the horrible Red Eye and Red Streak... blech.

[Gabe Milland]

The problem with a paper like the Chicago Tribune taking a leaf out of the UK Indie's book is presumably pagination. US big city papers have become so bloated with advertising-led supplements that it's impossible to shoe-horn them into a tabloid format - where the maximum number of pages is about 112.