By: Greg Mitchell The latest newspaper to join the "small-is-beautiful" movement is The New York Times, which announced on July 18 that its newly narrower size will mean a loss of 5% of the space the paper devotes to news, starting in April 2008.
USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post have already trimmed their broadsheet dimensions, and The Wall Street Journal is following suit. New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said the shrinkage would amount to an approximate 11% cut in newshole, but that pages will be added to soften the blow somewhat.
'"It's painful to watch an industry retrench," Keller said in a statement. "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." He also called the new look more "reader-friendly."
The change from 54-inch web to 48-inch will begin when the paper's new high-speed press is ready to roll next year, as the New York Times Co. consolidates its printing into a single plant located in College Point, Queens. As a result, 250 jobs will be eliminated.
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