42-inch web width

[Shweta Gamble]

We are narrowing our paper once again, and we are trying to decide if we should change our design to accommodate. We just moved from a 45-inch web to 44 inches, and now we are moving to 42 inches. Any advice? Here are examples of our paper on the two widths.

[Ken Carpenter]

42 inches?

Tell the bean counters they might as well go to 11-1/4-inch pages on a roll, then they can sell ads to Bounty.

Or 4-1/2 inches and sell ads to Charmin . . .

[Colin Smith]

The latest reduction just sounds foolish. If they're insistent on going narrower, go shallower as well. My college paper used the historic tabloid size (11" x 17") and it was a convenient size that also still had a bit of that broadsheet feel.

Encourage your higher-ups that, rather than approaching the ratio of a spadea, try a more time-tested size that won't force you into unpleasant page specs. Or, at the very least, switch to vertical design (where unrelated things can wrap around each other).

Of course the reason the bean counters don't do that is because it's difficult to change the cut rate of the page, and it's relatively simpler to make it narrower. Bah, I say. All the easy changes were made years ago.

Good luck.

[Ken Carpenter]

Don't the advertisers dictate page size? Aren't there "industry standards" that require keeping page size proportional to the standard ads?

[Tom Lynch]

I just learned that we are considering going to a 42-inch web as well. We're currently at 48, and can readily (from a mechanical standpoint) go to 46, but there's sentiment on high that we should start planning now to go to 42 as soon as the press can be reconfigured.

Anybody else out there aiming at 42"? Maybe we can share the joy and the pain as we work toward this skinny, skinny future.

[John Josey]

42 just sounds scary. We're at 44, and it's hard to imagine going anywhere beyond that. At this rate, we'll all print on 8.5x11 before long. Sheesh.

[Mark Coughlan]

what number of columns are you using on your current grid?... It looks seriously high on both the PDFs. Maybe even 8 or 9???... Personally I think the whole page would look far more inviting with a 5/6 column grid.

[David Brauhn]

No advice yet, but I'm investigating 42, too. I just took it down to 46 less than six months ago. It will be extremely vertical with a 22-inch cutoff. About a half hour ago, the publisher asked me to look at 44, but if he comes back in two months looking to cut it down again, I don't want to redo everything. I'm tired of it. I want to get on with my life. Forty-four wouldn't be too big of a drill, still a huge pain in the ass, but if 42 is a go, I will be more concerned about sports agate than anything else.
I know that the Evansville, Ind., Courier & Press is planning to go to 42 inches in early 2009 (www.newsandtech.com/issues/2008/November/nt/11-08_thinner.htm). It has a circulation of around 70,000 daily, so it might take designers there a little longer to push it through than some of the smaller papers considering the switch. If they launch their "tower of power" first, I'm going to send off for a few copies to see how they handled it. Until then, I'm going to see what I come up with, share what I find, and hope you will do the same.

[Ken Carpenter]

As a former "agate" man in Cleveland and Senior Editor managing a staff of "agate" clerks at The National Sports Daily, it might be time to put all but the essential local pro and big college agate online.

Newspapers should be about reading, shouldn't they?

[Dhyana Sansoucie]

The design absolutely needs to change with the paper width. 42" is quite narrow. It requires a different approach.

Take advantage of this opportunity to rethink what realistically belongs in the paper. Is there a sameness day after day ... tell your editors that 2-3 stories can fit, plus other short forms/briefs/teasers, depending upon the news of the day. You need some flexibility with the space you do have left.

How is your newshole holding up? Is there plenty of room to run some of the main stories inside, promoting them on the front? Or is your front page one of your main holes for local news? Answering that will point you in the right direction.

The biggest challenge: overcoming your assigning desk's habits and expectations. They can't just operate on autopilot.

Don't cut the local news. Plan for it better with more local analysis. Run stories short with layered sidebars, unless it's a very entertaining story. Find other places to cut.

I do think the real problem comes inside the paper. ... That's where the space crunch will hit home. We can always design a front page that will work. I'm curious what kind of grid your 42" paper will use inside. Is there a standard advertising unit for this size?

[Ken Carpenter]

Instead of automatically putting the same stories in the paper day after day, creating that dreaded "sameness" -- when I worked in Tampa we had to have a Buccaneers story on the sports front 365 days a year -- how about creating competition on your staff and put ONLY THE BEST STORIES in the paper. If the best stories are from AP, then they're in and the staff stuff (read: crap) is out. (Then, if they keep writing crap, then they're out!)

[Shweta Gamble]

We decided not to move to the smaller width ... it wasn't worth the expense of changing equipment in the pressroom. So for now, we are good.