Want More Readers? Go Small, Go Loud–Maybe
So you want more newspaper readers, maybe the way is to get brash and go tabloid. This from an article in Britain’s Globe and Mail:
The boundaries between tabloid and broadsheet have disappeared, and publishers around the world have watched the British newspaper industry learn that smaller is very often better.
The Times of London, the most legendary of broadsheets, won thousands of new readers in the latest surveys by abandoning its tradition and becoming a full-fledged tabloid. And the greatest readership growth in Britain this year has been registered by The Independent, a left-wing and formerly intellectual broadsheet that nearly went out of business before it adopted the small pages and loud, sensationalist tones of a tabloid.
In the past year, The Independent has seen its circulation grow about 19 per cent, to almost 200,000 (paid circulation, excluding multiple copy sales, in the United Kingdom and Ireland).
Indeed Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of The Times, says:
“We have to understand that for a great many of our readers, the Internet is part of their daily experience, and I think that in the past, newspapers have been rather arrogant about this, attempting to fashion websites that look like newspapers,” he said. “To be honest, we’ve reached a point where newspapers, in terms of how they look, have to be influenced by Internet iconography. I would argue that the compact [format], while not the same size as a computer screen, has a look of familiarity to the digital reader.”
But a couple of critics says the circulation gains are built around a lot of give-aways that the Times and Indepedent have instituted and not to the size or tone of the papers.
Thanks to the Editorsweblog.org for the pointer.
