Italy: leading paper silently switches to tabloid and full color

Spain's El Mundo reports that Italy's revered Corriere della Sera shocked its readers by becoming the first Italian daily to print color on every page and diminish the size of its broadsheet, both radical changes coming without warning. "We were looking to reach two objectives," the paper's marketing director said, "The first to create a newspaper more attractive to the reader pertaining to our graphic resources. The second was to attract more advertisements because color offers more possibilities to ad campaigns." The director continued, "We have moved closer to a tabloid format. We realize that the change represents a new era, but reader opinion was clear: they wanted a more manageable newspaper." The new format has also permitted new content; an opinion section will appear for the first time, pages dedicated to services will be reinforced and local pages will be converted into an independent supplement. Having recently placed in the top ten for the first time in a Swiss media company study of the world's best newspapers, (see previous posting), we'll have to wait until next year's survey to see if Corriere's new format affects its global competitiveness.

Source: El Mundo (in Spanish)