Reports of the imminent death of the print media may be premature, or even dead wrong, as ”tabloid fever” has gripped the industry in a trend that is gaining speed, a media conference was told on Tuesday.
The smaller newspaper format — long favoured by commuters for its compact size but scoffed at by high-brow broadsheets for its typically splashy headlines and short stories — is now taking the global print media by storm.
The trend, which gathered momentum after London’s Independent downsized in 2003, is reviving an industry challenged by electronic publishing, the world’s leading editors and publishers were told at a conference in Seoul.
One of the pioneers, Le Matin, a modest Swiss Francophone daily, went tabloid in September 2001. The heavyweights soon began lining up to follow.
”It was a small Swiss daily that made a big turnaround,” said Theo Bochart, publications director for Edipresse, the Swiss publishers.
”It took place at a time when nobody was talking about downsizing.”
Pundits including Microsoft’s Bill Gates have been predicting for years that newspapers would follow the path of the dinosaur while readers skipped down the information superhighway into the digital age.
Not so, some 1 300 executives were told during the world’s biggest annual print media gathering, organised by the World Association of Newspaper (WAN).
The number of newspapers is growing worldwide, advertising revenues are up, and total readership has surpassed one billion, according to WAN.
”It is somewhat ironic that in a year in which the newspaper is 400 years old — or perhaps more fittingly, 400 years young — so many media commentators are still suggesting that the game is up for newspapers,” said Gavin O’Reilly, WAN’s acting president.
”After 400 years of newspapers rightly dominating the media landscape –and successfully weathering the onslaught of radio, TV and latterly the new digital age — it’s hard to see the full-time whistle blowing quite yet.”
But to survive and prosper, newspapers have to become leaner and meaner and embrace the new high-tech age, say industry figures.
”The newspaper of 2020 will be small in size and will be very closely linked to the digital media and specifically the online media,” said Mario Garcia, a leading newspaper designer based in Florida, who advises newspapers on the transition to tabloid format.
Though Le Matin was a pioneer, and tabloids have been a features of the evening newspaper market in Britain and elsewhere for more than a generation, the neo-tabloid revolution was set in motion by the switch of the London Independent in 2003, followed by the London Times.
That so-called high-brow heavies, or more news-oriented broadsheets, were going tabloid, helped bury the perception that downsizing and going downmarket were synonymous.
Until recently, United States publishers were dismissive of the tabloid format, said Robb Montgomery, design editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, but he indicated that this may change.
”If the editor of the Times of London can get past going tabloid, I think so can others,” said Montgomery.
The Wall Street Journal’s overseas editions will go compact later this year and other big names may follow, he said.
”Who would have thought that the classical lady of financial journalism was going to go tabloid internationally,” said Garcia.
Jan-Eric Peters, editor of Berlin’s Die Welt newspaper, which also produces an evening paper and recently launched a compact daily, said tabloid fever was rising, rather than falling and there was no available antidote.
”People got a newspaper that they could handle at last, and they were grateful,” he said of the launch of Die Welt Kompakt one year ago.
Interestingly, the compact paper brought new readers, young people and others who had usually not read newspapers before, he said.
O’Reilly said that 36% of world newspapers were already tabloid and the trend was gathering pace, with 56 switchers in 2004 alone. Advertisers are generally enthusiastic, because page rates were lower while exposure was arguably better.
However, the phenomenon is most entrenched in declining media markets like Western Europe, where the pace of urban life is fast, people are mostly wired to the internet, and commuting is a fact of big city life.
In many parts of Asia, the broadsheet papers continue to rule the daily newspaper market.
”For example, in India broadsheets work,” O’Reilly said, ”because people mostly read newspaper at home or in the office because commuting is not so prevalent yet”. – Sapa-AFP