Is this the first Berliner with a strip ad across the bottom of the front? ;-)

Wonder when Florida Today will convert. . .I bet ol' Al will have something to say about that.

The headline fonts are Adobe Garamond and Whitney. The body text is MercuryText.

Anybody who's been to Lafayette, is it just me or is the dome in the flag compressed horizontally?

It's about time. I can't get any American papers where I live (apart from USA Today...which, frankly, is awful) but the American broadsheet shape is so awkward to read, I wonder how it ever made it to print in the first place... let alone how it became the format of choice for so many US papers.

Dave:

I blame the British!

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the broadsheet and the tabloid world. Let them come to Berlin.

There are some who say that websites and hand helds are the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.

And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the narrow web. Let them come to Berlin.

And there are even a few who say that it is true that front page ads are an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen.

(Apologies to President Kennedy.)

"There are some who say that websites and hand helds are the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin."

A new format won't change that...no matter how good it is.

"Dave:

I blame the British!"

Haha, why not...we blame you guys for everything else! :-)

I'm in favor of any format that helps win back readers. Personally, I don't think the newspapers' dimensions have much to do with our readership woes, but I am willing – eager even – to be proven wrong.
And I can't help but wonder how it works being a Gannett "prototype site." Is that something you sign up for, or does corporate just call up and say, "We decided you're going to become a Berliner."

easy to eat, easy to read...

Something to bear in mind:

This paper BOUGHT new presses, so I assume they were at the point where they needed new presses. Once that was established (and Gannett signed off on paying for them), they had the choice of press format. They went Berliner. My understanding is that most broadsheet presses could not "just convert" to Berliner. You'd either need a major refit or, more likely, you'd need to buy new presses.

If you've got reasonbly good offset presses that are in good shape at this point, I don't see many companies ponying up the millions strictly to change format.

Small papers with on-the-edge-of-death presses are likely the ones we'll see making this change first.

Err. Was wrong.

Headlines are Globe Madison, Franklin Gothic and Whitney.

Dean -- I'm not sure about printing, but I was recently asked by my pressman if I wanted to switch to the Berliner format and I said no. We did agree to go to a smaller broadsheet, however. And this was on an older press, so, maybe it's not that hard to do.

MV:

Could be. I asked about it at the World Tab Conference when Mario Garcia was showing off so many Berliners (over in Europe). All of those that were converting were going to new presses at the same time. Mario indicated that most papers wouldn't be able to switch on their existing presses.

Maybe it depends on which press/configuration you have?

They have a really cool doubletruck 3D color graphic of the MAN Roland Geoman press line in this PDF of their reader guide.

BTW, we have Zoomified 10 life-size news pages from today's new Berliner redesign over in the Redesign Wing of VizEds.
Have a look>/a> see.

I was in London last fall and thought the new Berliner-sized Guardian was great. Of course, a large part of what makes it a great newspaper is the content. The same thing was true when the Guardian was as wide as a bedsheet. And the same thing is true of the Guardian's excellent web site: content, content, content! That's the key.