The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently changed the size of its newsprint. Among the newspapers that come to the library where I work, it is not alone. In fact, it was probably the last holdout. The trend is skinnier. But the Post's proportions are odd. It is skinnier but it also appears taller. One day I picked up a section of the paper to refold it and put it back on the rack. There was a full-length ad inside, two columns wide or maybe three. It looked like nothing so much as advertising on a necktie.
I worked at a weekly newspaper in the distant past. When it got sold, the new owner changed the width of the paper -- about two inches wider in our case -- because he was sending the newspaper to a different printer. A weekly paper in a small town doesn't get very many opinionated letters to the editor but that change provoked one reader to write and complain. The wide paper was awkward to hold. Besides that, it was old-fashioned.
The owner justified the change by saying that he was using a local printer and the wider newsprint was the way newspapers were always meant to be. Plus, you got more square inches for your money if you bought a full-page ad. Of course, the columns were narrower (we had to switch from six normal-looking columns to eight narrow ones) so the square-inches economy worked only if you were buying a really wide ad.
People get conditioned to change and after a time what was new becomes the standard. Until it goes out of business and then it is late and lamented. Briefly.
I worked at a weekly newspaper in the distant past. When it got sold, the new owner changed the width of the paper -- about two inches wider in our case -- because he was sending the newspaper to a different printer. A weekly paper in a small town doesn't get very many opinionated letters to the editor but that change provoked one reader to write and complain. The wide paper was awkward to hold. Besides that, it was old-fashioned.
The owner justified the change by saying that he was using a local printer and the wider newsprint was the way newspapers were always meant to be. Plus, you got more square inches for your money if you bought a full-page ad. Of course, the columns were narrower (we had to switch from six normal-looking columns to eight narrow ones) so the square-inches economy worked only if you were buying a really wide ad.
People get conditioned to change and after a time what was new becomes the standard. Until it goes out of business and then it is late and lamented. Briefly.