The Chicago Tribune is trimming its page width again: another inch gone, some more dollars saved in newsprint costs, another disguised ad rate hike.
The progressive narrowing of the web width seems symbolic of the trap that snares large newspapers. Unable to make the bold and sweeping changes that might reverse their sagging fortunes, they tinker with the format, making small and insufficient alterations.
Broadsheet newspapers are terrible for reading. It's almost as if someone intentionally designed them to be inconvenient. If you're a fedora-wearing film noir spy trying to keep an eye on somebody in some smoky 1950s hotel coffee bar, they're great for hiding behind. For the rest of us, broadsheets suck. Try reading a newspaper on an airplane without poking your seatmate in the eye. And does anybody really think readers follow all those jumps from the front page?
Some newspapers have made a significant change: the Berliner format, a convenient size used by the Guardian, Barcelona's La Vanguardia and others.
But after the switch, Guardian editor Alan Rusberger was quoted as saying: "They may be the last presses we ever own." These days, he's not the only one saying that. With the capital markets beating up media companies pretty badly, there's little stomach for the huge investments involved in building new press lines.
I am not in the "print is dead" camp, but I do expect some more print companies and some big dailies to collapse in the next few years.
We live in radical times when incremental change isn't enough. Although the trends are clear, newspapers are still successful enough that they can't just walk away from existing product models without setting off a firestorm of consumer protest.
Even minor changes provoke backlash. Last year an editor told me she had spent an entire day on the phone explaining to callers why she had dropped the "Andy Capp" cartoon.
Smart newspapers are rapidly moving to a "portfolio" approach with an array of print and online products that are targeted at specific demographic or geographic slices.
The Chicago Tribune has a free daily tabloid, Red Eye, a paid daily Spanish-language tabloid, Hoy, an array of suburban products, Metromix online and other niche offerings. Dallas Morning News has Quick. The Arizona Republic has launched or acquired more than 30 niche products. The flagship brands may one day disappear, but the hope is that the company survives and practices its trade in new ways.
But can they move quickly enough? As the publisher of one major daily told me, the assets aren't right. The presses are set up for long-run broadsheet manufacturing. The distribution system isn't targeted. And the biggest problem of all: the people aren't right. Niche marketing, hyperlocal focus and "small is big" aren't easily accomplished in the culture of a metro daily.