There is a strong chance that you are reading this blog and, perhaps, the Stornoway Gazette on your tablet device. However, when you purchase the print copy of this weekly paper, it comes in the broadsheet format. It could change to tabloid or compact size and a survey is available to gauge your views. So are your preferences for papers with the dimensions of the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times or do you like to hold the smaller varieties? Here there is an interesting division. The Times, The Independent, The Morning Star and The Scotsman call themselves 'compacts' while the The Sun, Daily Star, Daily Mirror and Daily Record, published in identical form, see themselves as 'tabloids'. The Daily Mail, when it changed from a broadsheet, devised the word 'compact' but now prefers to be seen in 'the tabloid team'. The exception is The Guardian which has an in-between-size, the Berliner format, first produced in Europe and adopted by a significant number of American papers.
Scottish Islands Explorer - an A4-size magazine
I much prefer the Guardian berlinner format but someone, at the Guardian, told me it had been a disaster financially for them. They bought two of the presses but one is standing idle because no one else uses the format so they can't bring in extra work to keep it busy
ReplyDeleteRichard Clubley
The Daily Telegraph is my favourite paper & I'm used to its size.
ReplyDeleteThis demonstrated a danger of being in the vanguard of any new movement. Salesmen convinced The Guardian that they needed two presses in case of breakdown and to supply the demands of the emerging fellow-users of he Berliner format. The latter has never appeared. An irony is that although the format is popular in Europe only two German national newspapers now use it.
ReplyDelete