Editor’s note: Pelle Anderson, founder of design company A4, also helped to create Metro, the world’s largest newspaper publisher. Metro, launched in 1995, today is published in 42 daily editions in 63 major cities worldwide, including New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Here, in an excerpt of newspaper techniques’ discussion with Anderson, he discusses the future of newspapers, including the trend toward tabloidization. 

newspaper techniques: Do you feel responsible to some extent for the global trend towards switching to a compact format?

Pelle Anderson: Many attribute the start of this fascination with the short format to Metro. The international success of this newspaper has certainly made it a standard-bearer for tabloid. But, more seriously, it is the way of the future. Reader surveys carried out for years by the newspapers show that readers favor the short format. Perhaps it is the publishers who did not listen to this demand before. The trend is destined to continue in the future. Personally, my favorite format is the semi-Berlin (or micro format) such as you find in Switzerland and Austria. It is a great format.

After another five years, broadsheet will have disappeared in Europe. But I do not believe that it will stop there. This question of the newspaper size is just the beginning of a development, and we have only started to broach this subject.

The development is in line with the lifestyle of the readers. Look at all the portable computer-type equipment that is becoming smaller and smaller.

nt: You claim that the main reason for the drop in newspaper circulation is that no account is taken of the development of the readers’ lifestyle. Is that so?

Anderson: The publishers must understand that they are no longer in a daily newspaper market, nor a media market: they are in a time market.

They are competing with everything that eats into the available free time of their customers. People do not have the time to read the thick “daily everything.”

Society has changed since the 1950s, but newspapers have not adapted and have retained all that they used to offer at that time. Readers spend less time with their newspaper, and the amount of time they do spend is diminishing by several minutes every year.

It is preferable to spend 15 minutes with a newspaper that you can read than with a newspaper that is a source of frustration because you are unable to read it.

nt: The international success of Metro among its target audience of those under 35 years old seems to dismiss the concept of a daily newspaper immersed in the culture of a country. Is that so?

Anderson: In my opinion, there are two prevailing cultures in the daily newspaper sector: that of the major population centers and that of rural areas. City culture is the same the world over. And Metro is the proof. People’s centers of interest and concerns are very much alike. A daily newspaper catering to this culture will never be successful in small towns or rural districts. Regional dailies satisfy a genuine community need. Geographical identification is very important. In major cities, there will never be the resources to produce a daily newspaper that provides coverage of every district.  

nt: But will it not become off-putting to see only small newspapers?

Anderson: What is off-putting most of all is boring photographs and articles.

This principle holds equally true for both tabloids and broadsheets. It is not so much format or even design that count: but the content. When you change to a small format, you have less space, and therefore, you must express yourself in fewer words, which has a genuine impact on journalists’ ways of working.

On the other hand, in tabloid, I think that it is also necessary to have a contrast between very short articles and in-depth reports that may cover two or three pages.

What I hate is an absence of contrast, all articles with the same size, no “rhythm.” From the beginning, we took due account of this in Metro and scheduled a daily two-page article that stood out from the other articles by its length.

Worst of all, in my opinion, are the newspapers that produce a part of the daily title in tabloid and the other part in broadsheet. They lose a lot of paper and readers do not know what is going on.

nt: What are the practical difficulties of the small format?

Anderson: One of the problems to be managed is the practical doubling of the page count. This increase means organizing the newspaper in such a way as to help the reader to find his way around.

What is needed is a type of navigation chart that is a lot more explicit than in the broadsheet format.

Moreover, on a tabloid page it is essential to give the reader the same possibility to come to a stop as on a broadsheet page.

In order to achieve this result, each tabloid page must offer an information hierarchy built around at least two articles aimed at grabbing the reader’s attention.

Increasing the page count means that the newsroom must double the number of articles it produces, and that is very difficult. In addition, each page must contain several short news items.

Ideally, a page should contain between seven and 12 articles. Therefore, in addition to the two main articles, there must be at least five short news items. Last but not least, on a broadsheet page you can put a lot of text and different angles on a topic.

In the small format, preserving continuity in an in-depth report that runs over several pages calls for a much greater design effort. It means a lot more work for the person arranging these pages. Whether this is a layout artist or a sub-editor, he must have a total view of the entire process and organize the information in a logical way for the reader.

nt: So it is an error to think that savings can be made in the newsroom?

Anderson: Yes, because your work will revolve around the editorial skills you have at your disposal for making your editorial selections.

Editorial quality is capital, even if you offer your newspaper free of charge. The journalistic “harvest” must be considered a type of vast database. It is on this basis that it will be decided which is the best distribution medium. Because, as an add-on to the published article, you have the possibility to realize a complementary coverage for certain target audiences (e.g. via e-mail or SMS).

Many newspapers have Internet sites that are costly to operate, but do not utilize the major potential of e-mailing. But e-mail represents the most cost-efficient way to distribute content and people can choose what they want.

nt: Does the change to the short format signal the end of newspapers produced with different sections?

Anderson: For me, topic-related sections do not cause a problem in the short format. The regional daily newspaper that I am working for at present will be in three parts every day: the first section featuring current news, the second “culture, analyzes, debate,” and the third part dedicated to a new topic each day. In this way, the reader will become accustomed to this organization in three parts.

nt: Will the newsroom organization have to change?

Anderson: The only thing that I consider important is the upgrading of visual journalism skills. What we need are journalists with a graphic awareness, and if these do not exist at the company, then they must be trained accordingly. There is no point in entrusting the organization of the newspaper to a designer. You must build the design around the content.

This article was first published in newspaper techniques, the monthly magazine of Ifra. If you have any comments or questions about this article, please send them to Info@technical-solutions.org. If you’re interested to learn more about the training and consulting services available to newspapers through Ifra’s joint venture with the Newspaper Association of America, please contact Technical Solutions LLC at www.technical-solutions.org.