Yet another sign of an ailing newspaper industry:
The Wall Street Journal, whose wide pages and text-rich look have long been an icon of the American newspaper business, is about to undergo several changes that include cutting three inches off its width.
But it sounds a lot more profound than that:
Along with the size reduction, which is equivalent to about one of its columns, the newspaper will add more color and graphical elements, including greater use of photographs. It also will have fewer stories “jump” inside the newspaper.
The changes, which take effect Jan. 2, were to be unveiled at a press conference in New York on Monday. Robert Christie, a spokesman for Dow Jones & Co., which publishes the Journal, described several of the features generally but declined to provide fuller details ahead of the announcement.
Other major newspapers have also cut their width in recent years as a way to save money, including The Washington Post, Tribune Co.’s Los Angeles Times and Gannett Co.’s USA Today. The New York Times is planning to reduce its width in 2008.
Dow Jones says reducing the Journal’s width will save about $18 million a year. It will bring the newspaper in line with a widely used industry standard, allowing the newspaper to be printed in far more places than it is currently.
The Journal is HARDLY on its way out. It still enjoys a huge and loyal readership. But what is happening is indicative of an industry that is having to change as the country’s news culture rapidly changes. Just a few elements:
(1) The growth and influence of the Internet.
(2) The revolution in newspaper packaging sparked by the advent of USA Today (still one of the nation’s underrated papers — a paper not linked to enough by weblogs). USA Today splashed color, graphics, dramatic photos…and caused many other papers (whose editors in some cases predicted USA Today wouldn’t survive) to follow suit.
(3) Younger readers who will not necessarily continue to be consumers of printed news. So publishers need to adapt.
It’s part packaging to bring in readers, and part budget-slashing as insurance against readership fluctuations. And then, too, there’s the continued growth of the Internet. Modest little sites like this allow readers to give instant feedback to writers (and no, my computer won’t fit if I try to stuff it up there..) and the Internet is gobbling up some time Americans used to devote to the printed page.
The bottom line: it ain’t your grandpa’s newspaper market…or your daddy’s newspaper market. And papers have to adjust in their marketing, communication techniques and spending in order to survive.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.