The broadsheet newspaper is as American as Patrick Henry's great speech and Irving Berlin's songs, and in fact going back into history, the width of the newpaper page was even broader.
But how Americans partake of their information is changing, led by the internet, and one effect is that the traditional broadsheet is being trimmed and in many places replaced entirely by the smaller tabloid format. The reason: Faced with eroding circulations, publishers are looking for ways to make their papers less unwieldy and more inviting to readers.
Now enter the Berliner. It's larger than the tabloid, combining its best attributes with those of the broadsheet. It's a European format, as its name suggests, and it's increasingly popular there. Britain's Guardian switched to the Berliner several years ago, and it's used as well by papers in France, Italy and Spain.
Now the Berliner is beginning to pop up in the U.S.
It would seem a modest entry, for sure. At the beginning of the month, the Berliner format was adopted by The Lafayette Journal & Courier in Lafayette, Indiana, a city of some 60,000 people located northwest of Indianapolis on the way to Chicago.
Lafayette's residents like the change, the paper's publisher, Gary Suisman, tells Media Life.
"I've heard the words 'love' and 'your newspaper' more in the last 10 days than in my past 25 years in the business," he says of the switchover, which took place July 31. He says single-copy sales and advertising are both up since then. The paper, which has a circulation of 36,000, has also sold a few hundred commemorative sets that include the paper's last broadsheet and first Berliner editions.
The Berliner is taller than a tabloid at 18 inches high, versus 14.75 for tabs, Also, unlike a tab but like a traditional broadsheet, it can be printed in sections, which readers like. "When we went to our size change, we didn't want to change how people read the newspaper," Suisman says. Though the page count doubled, the news hole will probably remain roughly the same.
While switching requires new presses, at a cost of $24 million for the Journal & Courier, Suisman says he expects to save 10 percent to 15 percent on newsprint.
The significance of the Journal & Courier switchover is that the paper is part of the Gannett chain, the nation's largest with some 90 dailies, including USA Today. It was that paper that in 2000 first trimmed its page width, which led to a slew of other national papers following after, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Gannett could well convert other papers to the Berliner format over time. Says a Gannett spokesperson, Tara Connell: "As we start looking at replacements [for our presses], the Berliner will figure into that discussion. Of course, it depends on the community, on what readers want and what advertisers want."
What impressed Gannett is the format's potential for drawing new readers. "Among the things we've found is new groups of people are interested in reading it because it is new and different. We're absolutely thinking that this will appeal to new readers besides those who already read the newspaper."
Out in Bismarck, North Dakota, the Tribune last year converted to a format similar to the Berliner, though larger, and readers there were also pleased with the new look.
This does not surprise S.W. Papert, who is CEO of Belden Associates, a newspaper research and consulting firm, which has done research on the format issue.
"When Belden has asked audiences if they would like or prefer a tabloid format over a broadsheet, the response has been overwhelming," he says. "There have only been a couple newspapers, in Bismarck and Lafayatte, where the core product has changed from a broadsheet to a tabloid. But all the new titles, all the young adult titles, all the free titles are tabloid, and it's not just because of newsprint. The market demands it."
And while new presses are expensive, he notes that ever-declining circulation is even more so.
The Berliner format can also make life easier for ad buyers. Both those papers have switched their ad units from column inches to page-fractions.
Papert says one catch is that ad revenues might be lower for Berliners, since the smaller full-age ad can't command as much as a full broadsheet page, at half its size.
But another longtime newspaper consultant, Christine D. Urban, president of Urban & Associates, thinks otherwise
"Unlike trimming the web width, it's not just a cost-saving move. It's also a design move," she says, and a Berliner page should be worth as much as any other.
"A page is a page is a page. The logic that you're losing a lot of money comes from a column-inch format world. But advertisers taking out a full page are buying traffic-stopping space, so it's logical that the cost would be the same."
Samantha Melamed is a staff writer for Media Life.
