The Compact Revolution

Simon Kelner, Chief Editor, The Independent, United Kingdom

"What has happened since we launched on September 30 last year is nothing short of a revolution," said Mr Kelner of The Independent’s decision to offer a compact edition alongside its broadsheet.

A moment of clarity in a supermarket led to this revolution, he said.

"I was buying toothpaste and I saw you could buy a big tube, a small tube, all sizes -- why not do the same with the newspaper? A newspaper is the only product whose shape and size is dictated by the producer and not the consumer," he says.

Though Mr Kelner says an epiphany in a supermarket led to The Independent to offer both a compact and a broadsheet edition, it was also generated by the realities of the market.

The Independent was the smallest of four quality dailies in a market where circulation was declining rapidly. Something had to be done, but a complete switch to compact would have been too risky.

But after eight months offering both formats, The Independent dropped the broadsheet edition. The acceptance of the smaller edition led to the decision.

Mr Kelner returned to his toothpaste analogy and said that perhaps too much choice can be confusing.

Size Isn’t Everything

George Brock, Managing Editor, The Times, United Kingdom

The global trend to compact editions "is not a single trend to one shape," says Mr Brock, but several different attempts to use format changes to attract readers.

"Size is not everything," he says. "Newspapers are in the business of creating relationships with readers and format is just one part of that."

Like The Independent, The Times has enjoyed circulation gains (approximately 10 percent) since the launch of the compact edition (it continues to offer the broadsheet as well). But it isn’t only about the numbers -- it is also about the quality of readers.

Mr Brock said one thing newspapers considering a format change should ask themselves is: which readers are you trying to reach? In the cast of The Times, it meant reaching more commuters, more women, more people who had little time to read.

Despite these changes, the broadsheet has a future, says Mr Brock.

"The broadsheet isn’t going to disappear very soon in the British market," he says. "I can’t tell you what will happen in 20 years, but in three or four years, there will still be broadsheets."

It’s a Fakt: Tabloid Leads Market in Poland

Grzegorz Jankowski, Editor, Fakt, Poland

Only two months after its launch, the Polish tabloid Fakt became the biggest newspaper in Poland.

Mr Jankowski provided the recipe for its success, and said it represented a new era for tabloid-sized newspapers in Central and Eastern Europe.

"The ’picture newspapers’ are expanding," he says. "In western countries, tabloids have existed for dozens of years, but in Poland and in other post-communist countries they appeared only a few years ago," he said.

Fakt, launched last October by Axel Springer, outsold Gazeta Wyborcza in December to become the country’s top-selling newspaper. Fakt’s daily circulation reached over 536,000, only two months after its October 22 launch, compared to 433,000 for Gazeta Wyborcza.

"Tabloid journalism" is appealing to the new European markets, said Mr Jankowski. But the phrase, which has negative implications in many markets as being less serious-minded than other papers, has a very different meaning in today’s "tabloid boom" environment.

"It is popular, quick, modern, based on pictures, it surprises readers with ideas, it informs explicitly about the topic, it describes events and social phenomena in a simple and clear way, it is independent and friendly towards readers and it helps them solve everyday problems," says Mr Jankowski.

How to Get Close to Readers

Niels Lunde, Editor in Chief, Berlingske Tidende, Denmark, and Ole Kahrs, Director of Communication and Content, Bearing Point

How do you define the newspaper of the future in Denmark?

If you are 255-year-old Berlinske Tidende, you conduct six separate readership surveys, test three different formats and send 80 of your staff to editorial workshops.

The process produced a focused editorial mission:
  Readers must identify with the newspaper, so "we have to give them confirmation of their values in life," says Mr Lunde. "This is very controversial. Journalists want to do the very opposite -- they want to challenge the reader. Our newspaper is conservative and our journalists are anything but."
  Readers want "news you can use."
  Editorial priorities must be very clearly defined both to staff and to readers too. Readers don’t read everything in the newspaper, "so if you want the reader to understand what you are doing, you have to make it very visible."
  The newspaper has to be easy to read, with good navigation.
  It is important to promote upcoming features. Readers, even loyal ones, don’t necessarily read the paper every day. "If we can promote stories and get them to read tommorrow or the day after tomorrow, it is very important," said Mr Lunde.

Tabloids are the Newspapers of the Future

Raymundo Riva-Palacio, Editor for external affairs, El Universal, Mexico

"It is likely that the newspaper of the future in Mexico will be the tabloid," says Mr Riva-Palacio, who provided an history of the Mexican newspaper market to support his claim.

"It is important to reach out to the new readers who have less and less time," he says. "Fast information that is different from radio and television is very important."

The Mexican press has been publishing tabloids for over a century. But the influence of the US press generated a strong notion in Mexico that only broadsheet papers carried serious content, a conception that lasted several decades.

It was not until the 1990s that tabloids really made their way into Mexican journalistic culture, attacking the quality press market and challenging decision-makers. Although they have not yet had time to prove their capacity to get in ahead of broadsheets on the quality press market, their successful commitment to present news from a different angle, covering issues aimed at that specific market, shows this could be a medium-term strategy to compete in this sector against the boom of digital media outlets, providing analysis and insight only the written press can offer.