Reading without fiber

Column Newspapers are often so extensive
and threateningly fat, so that you can no longer put them in your own
apartment. But it can also be light as a feather and colorful, says Stephan Russ-Mohl.hocus-pocus - less newspaper, more
Quality! This magic piece deserves all our attention, even
if it is currently hardly recommended to other publishers for imitation.
is: Switch to the small tabloid format and leave the
The size of the newspaper will shrink drastically - so drastically that it will
annual cost savings of 22 million Swiss francs (= 17 million dollars)
probably mainly for printing and paper. One demands for
sheet and the same price as before for the smaller advertisements. And
readers and advertisers that they are now being offered a wide range of services.
more than before.
This is what happened a few days ago at the Wall Street Journal Europe (cf.
Advertising Week of 13.10.05). And the funny thing is that everything
right - at least for the core target group that the business newspaper
would like to achieve. Every manager, every banker and everyone else who
has something to say today complains about "information overload". Even the
The many e-mails that reach you every day are often hard to digest.
For readers and advertisers alike, this can be a real problem.
quality feature of a newspaper if it is able to offer the
Essentials condensed, instead of threateningly bold and extensive
to come along. I can remember the letter from an annoyed
New York Times reader who canceled his subscription to the newspaper when
his four- or five-year-old son the several-pound
No more lugging the Sunday edition from the letterbox to the apartment
was able to do.

Moreover, no manager or banker can afford it today,
not be networked on the Internet. So why should a
print many more pages of price lists, when there are
All data has long been much more up-to-date and convenient online
be retrieved? And why shouldn't publishers make their newspaper and their
intelligently network web offerings so that the printed information
just enough to keep you up to date on the road, the
more specialized, in-depth background reporting on the web
is provided? And why do so many journalists and also
Advertisers continue to believe that their messages are only taken seriously,
when they are printed on large-format paper, which in most
situations in life in which the stressed contemporary still has time to
finds reading the newspaper unwieldy?

I have no insight into the books of the Wall Street Journal. Few
days after the relaunch, it is also certainly far too early to reliably
whether the experiment will pay off. Only one
success indicator I have to offer at the moment: At the small but
The Università della Svizzera Italiana, where I teach, is located in the
Entrance area a silent salesperson: The Wall Street Journal Europe
is provided there free of charge for students every day. Until before
For three weeks, the large-format newspapers lay around heavy as lead, barely
someone was interested in them. Now, since the leaf is light as a feather
and colorful and fits in every women's handbag, you have to
first thing in the morning - because at lunchtime the shelves are sometimes full.
already emptied.

Stephan Russ-Mohl is a professor of journalism at the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano.