Wall Street Journal won't switch to compact

Posted by John Burke on February 22, 2006 at 5:05 PM

The famous financial daily, The Wall Street Journal, may be thinning itself from a width of 15 to 12 inches and the globetrotting newspaper designer Mario Garcia may be pushing for a compact, but it doesn't appear that the Dow Jones' flagship will be cut down to tabloid size.

Garcia is currently working on a redesign after having helped the Journal add color to its front page in 2002.

But despite having switched its European and Asian editions to a compact format, it is doubtful the Journal itself will adopt the design that Garcia predicts will soon be standard.

"In five years, you will hit a generation of readers who don't remember life without the Internet," said Garcia. "People who are coming from . . . the screen of the Internet are used to reading within the confines of a smaller place and transfer more quickly to the tabloid."

Paul Steiger, managing editor of WSJ, however, said, "We need to balance what our readers are used to and what they love about the paper (while) taking advantage of the fact that more and more news is communicated online."

In other words, the printed paper will be more intertwined with the paper's paid website, which if included in circulation figures would have the fifth highest of all American newspapers, but the printed version won't alienate its loyal readers by drastically reducing its size.

Still, some newspaper people consider changing design a bad excuse for an industry disconnected from its customers.

Bill Gaspard of the Las Vegas Sun and former president of the Society for News Design said, "The design is fine at most newspapers. (The problem is that) no one is acknowledging yet that people spend 20 to 30 minutes a day with them, and we're still editing and designing this stuff as if people are spending two or three hours a day with it. Newspapers have largely been produced for the satisfaction of other journalists, and the jig is up now."

Even Garcia himself admits that redesigns won't save the newspaper industry; "A redesign is like plastic surgery . . . it can change your nose, but not your personality."

So, is the Wall Street Journal paying Garcia $350,000 for nothing?

Source: St. Petersburg Times