NY Times to Get Skinnier by 2008

The NY Times announces that its print edition will be 1.5" narrower and a printing plant in NJ will be closed. With this change, a total of 1050 jobs will be lost and most of the regional printing will be moved to the College Point, Queens plant.

The Times notes, "Several other American broadsheets reduced their size a few years ago, and many are planning further shrinkage to cut costs as the price of newsprint climbs and newspapers lose readers and advertisers to the Internet." Yes - blame the trees and the Internet! Executive editor Bill Keller said at a quarterly meeting, “It’s painful to watch an industry retrench. But this is a much less painful way to go about assuring our economic survival than cutting staff or closing foreign bureaus or retrenching our investigative reporting or diluting the Washington bureau.”

Expect the slimmer, width-wise (the Times will be increasing pages to accomodate the loss, for a net 5% loss of page space), edition in April 2008, which is part of a "phased-in" redesign. We suppose the Times will keep the six column structure, but it should be an interesting change. Right now, the Times is about 13.75" wide, so the new version will end about one-third of the way into the sixth column. If the paper gets fatter, we wonder how that'll effect folding it while reading it on the train.

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By Jen Chung in Arts & Entertainment on July 18, 2006 8:47 AM

Comments [rss]

x75

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/downsizing_the_new_york_times.html

A profitable company is to shutter a factory it built in 1992 as part of a much-hailed visionary strategy to take advantage of technology. But now it is just a cost to be cut. Eight hundred jobs, many of them well-paying blue collar positions (supposedly an endangered species) will disappear, while managerial and professional jobs are being protected.

Normally, this would be a juicy target for series of articles on the front and business pages of the New York Times. You know the drill: a parade of blue collar people victimized by the Bush administration, and now facing a bleak future. Meanwhile the insiders make out fine. There's even a fat cat CEO whose compensation package has done a whole lot better than its profits or stock. If Howell Raines still were editor, he'd get at least 40 stories out of it.

But today, the company in question is the New York Times Company. So don't expect the same rules to apply.

Editor Bill Keller:

"...this is a much less painful way to go about assuring our economic survival than cutting staff."

The blue collar denizens of Jersey never quite made it being considered staff, after all. Not in the eyes of Bill Keller his colleagues in Manhattan. Not even close.

kz

Im sure its online viewing has increased.

anonymass

I agree completely: it should strive for the 'fair and balanced' hallmark that is Fox News.

Dumbass.

roy

It is also changing its name officially to New York Jazeera. A bit more leftist propaganda, forged documents ala National Guard memos, faked news ala Jason Blair and secret information delivered to Al-Qaida and tipping off domestic hezbollah cells about upcoming FBI raid. In other work, nothing is going to change.

Seriously, the decline of NY Jazeera is a direct result of its far-left propaganda. It was once a great, fair and balanced newspaper but nowadays it is just an extension to micheal moore blogs. Nobody is taking it seriously anymore except some hard core ultra liberals.

No wonder its circulation and stock prices have plunged.

just sayin'

Rather than mocking the Times over the cost of newsprint shouldn't Gothamist applaud the use of less paper?

anonymass

I think it will be easier to read on the train, as a narrower profile = less arm-swinging space required to turn the page.

Also, less distance required between left and right arm in holding the paper = better for those sitting. Less elbows-in-neighbors'-face-itis.

S.D.

A NY paper actually printing in NY??

Toby

The Washington Post did this kind of a shrink a few years ago and it was sort of odd being a tad smaller.

I wonder if the Times will ever go tabloid, as many of the British broadsheets have. It is sort of weird seeing quality newspapers in tabloid form.