A Plea For Bigger Font Sizes

By: Jay DeFoore News organizations are constantly looking to appeal to younger readers, after all, that's who advertisers want to reach. But what about the older, loyal readers news organizations already have? Are we overlooking their needs?

One such reader contacted E&P last week to complain about our Web site's small font size. Her plea, pasted below, underscores the difficulties many site designers face: cramming ever-increasing amounts of headlines, photos, and ads onto users' computer screens. And with a recent report indicating that the average newspaper reader is 55, the problem could only get worse.

If any of you have suggestions on how to balance readability and good design, e-mail me with suggestions, which will be added to this story.

Here's the letter from 76-year-old Veronica Dolan, a self-described "news junkie" in Denver, Colo.:

I am a computer nerd with bad eyesight. My son has already cranked up my PC power to 175% in order for me to read words comfortably. Unfortunately, I am unable to increase the type size on all sites. Even if some sites have that button you can hit to make the type larger, it often doesn't work.

E&P is not the worst site I've encountered. The very worst is Bloomberg, followed by Breitbart, BBC, then E&P, the Las Vegas Sun, and This Is London. Several other bad ones I can't recall at the moment.

The best sites are NY Times, Washington Post, Drudge, MyWay, National Review, NY Post, UK Daily Mirror, and many columnists I link to from Drudge, such as Andrew Sullivan. They all use large type. I don't have cable TV so I go to Drudge every morning to get the latest news and click on various links according to Drudge headlines. Until recently Drudge did a lot of linking to MyWay for national stories and that was great. He now links most often to Breitbart and that site is Horrible! Totally unreadable.

I then go to AP National wire, which until 3 or 4 weeks ago was one of the best for large typefaces. Then Drudge switched things and now you can only get AP news via the Las Vegas Sun site. And the Sun uses such miniscule type it's impossible to read its stories.

So if I see a headline in the Sun listing (frequently having to use a magnifying glass), I click on the headline and when the story comes up I hit "Printable Text Version" at the top of the page and a story comes up in large type. Very clever of me, don't you think? But then I have to click twice to get out of that story and click on something else that looks interesting. Takes a bit of time if there are six or seven AP stories that intrigue me.

God knows why Drudge changed from AP straight to AP via the stupid Las Vegas Sun site. I have e-mailed him about four times asking him to change back but I'm sure he won't.

NY Observer had a wonderful site until about six months ago. Then they went from large type down to tiny type that I can't read. A nice lady at NYO seemed distressed when I complained but she said she could do nothing.

I don't understand why you people in the media are downsizing type when there was a recent story that the average age of a newspaper reader today is 55, which means his/her eyesight is not getting any better. And the NY Times ran a page one story recently that book publishers are reprinting the classics with larger type because the only people in the country who read anymore are getting older and losing their 20/20 eyesight.

I have subscribed to Publishers Weekly for more than 25 years. They recently got a new editor and she stupidly redesigned the magazine to look prettier with lots more white space and smaller type. For this I have been paying $179 annually. So I didn't renew and sent her a letter telling her why and she blew me off with a thanks for being a former reader. Why wasn't she concerned? How many others won't renew because they can't read the copy? Doesn't a magazine care about keeping readers?

I don't understand the thinking of you in the media. Your readers are getting older and I bet the people who design your Web sites are in their 20s or early 30s (because older folks aren't that sharp about computers) and all designers have 20/20 vision. Thus the smaller type. And the business department is standing behind the designers urging them to make space for just another one or two ads, which they jam in by decreasing the type size. I guess papers and magazines are in dire financial straights, but there's got to be a way to use larger type and still sell ads.

Cordially,

Veronica Dolan
www.veronicadolan.com