Friday, September 18, 2009

Blogger: Miami Herald should reduce to 11 x 17 broadsheet

South Florida blogger gimleteye recommends the Miami Herald downsize to 11 x 17:

It is the incredibly shrinking Herald. I'm not sure there is anything to do to stop the demise of McClatchy or its ownership of the Herald. The chain will likely follow its industry into receivership, notwithstanding this economic 'recovery'. How will The Herald emerge? Based on what I'm reading, I would suggest the eventual owners should downsize the print version to an 11 X 17 inch multi-page broadside: few photos but lots of advertising. That is basically the size we're reading in print version now. This sort of simple printed version is what some hotels in Europe offer to guests, in the form of either the NY Times of IHT. It would do a better job paying for the costs of news, but first the existing capital structure of newspaper companies will need to be restructured through bankruptcy. The online edition has more promise and easily fits more and better tailored information for consumers, but can't pay for itself. That's the purpose of the simple 11 x 17: it holds advertising, too. Kind of like The Herald, now.


Downside: if the paper was reduced to 11x17 the Herald would have to lower its subscription price.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Newspaper press conversions for reduced sized pages is an expensive project.

Got to spend money to save money.