With the success of tabloid conversions of European newspapers and declining circulation stateside, one of the big questions in American newspaper design circles has been when American broadsheets will begin to make the switch. And who will do it?

The New York Times reports today that the Jersey Journal, a 26,700-circulation Newhouse paper in Jersey City, N.J., will make the conversion to tabloid on April 25.

"We had to address the declining circulation of the daily," said Steve Newhouse, editor in chief of The Jersey Journal and chairman of Advance.net, which oversees the local Web sites of the Newhouse newspapers and the national Web sites of Condé Nast. "We were nervous about putting out a tabloid, but we're making sure that The Jersey Journal has a future."

And it's not just Newhouse. Knight Ridder Newspapers chairman Anthony Ridder says that he will soon identify two or three KR markets where they will experiment with coverting broadsheets to tabs.

"Tabs seem to work better in larger metro areas," Mr. Ridder said. "Initially, people were recommending that we try this in smaller markets where there would be less at risk, but we're feeling now that to get the benefit out of it, we need to focus on our larger markets."

"So that's where we're headed," he added, declining to say in which markets he would start the experiment.

Jeff Jarvis, Advance.net creative director and a popular weblogger, consulted on the New Jersey project.

He said his experience online showed him that it was necessary for newspapers to change but that they were often resistant. "I'm amazed it took the industry this long to learn that readers preferred this format," he said of tabloids. "And that the format doesn't have cooties."

Also, you may start start hearing the term "compact" more.

"They don't call them tabloids," said Mario Garcia, a newspaper designer based in Tampa, Fla., who has overseen the conversions of 15 newspapers to smaller formats. "Tab smells of down-market, of blood, sex and guts. You want to go to a compact. That makes you think of a small Mercedes, a small Jaguar."

Editors, start your engines.

>The News Is Big. It's the Papers That Are Getting Small [The New York Times]