Lots of tabloid talk at Poynter today. Mario Garcia weighs in with a distillation of the 24-page white paper (PDF) he's just released.

In the case of newspapers, we have had to wait a long time and climb a steep mountain to get to this exciting moment in which more newspapers are looking at smaller formats as an option. For many, it is already a reality. Conversion from broadsheet to tabloid has paid off: Readers like it, advertisers get used to it faster than anyone thought, and the "wave" of tabloid conversions extends globally. Even the United States is taking a peek into what some of their newspapers will look like in a format other than the huge broadsheet that has served as the canvas for decades.

Of course, almost all broadsheet papers have some tab sections, but U.S. advertisers and readers prefer that the core product be in broadsheet format.

How do I know? Because that's what readers and advertisers tell me. Before beginning a redesign in any market, I interview readers and advertisers to learn their preferences. They say tabs are fine for targeted products, but not the core product. Advertisers prefer the larger size. Readers cite the tabloid stigma.

As a reader, I love the tabloid. It’s more intimate to read because you hold it closer to your body, unlike reading a broadsheet with arms spread out like an eagle. As a designer it is more challenging, a smaller canvas makes you edit your idea and your execution of that idea more tightly. That’s a magic that keeps one’s skills sharp.

It seems to me the shape of the paper isn't really the issue; what matters are the four Cs: the content, the continuity, the coherence and the completeness.

Remember the Parkville Luminary, that new-ish weekly with the old-ish vibe in the Kansas City area? Publisher Mark Vasto sends word that the paper's website is up and running. With pdfs of the front page, even!

VisualMente has several posts (1, 2, 3, 4) about some infographic-type images created by Lisbon advertising firm Foote Cone & Belding. It's a campaign for the Portuguese political magazine Grande Reportagem. It turns flags of various countries into infographics by adding a legend. For instance:

United States
Red: In favor of the war in Iraq
White: Against the war in Iraq
Blue: Don't know where Iraq is

Colombia
Red: Exportation of bananas
Blue: Exportation of coffee
Yellow: Exportation of cocaine

You can find the rest here.

Pretty funny juxtaposition of photo and unrelated headline at the Dallas Morning News this morning. (Via Matt Haughey)

And a pretty cringe-worthy one from the Strib at planetdan.net. I think they fixed it for some copies, though, because the Newseum page is different.

It's been a bit quiet around here, as I've been communing with the sea turtles and various species of your rum-based beverages.

Anyway, one of the best (and cheapest) things you can find at the Pearl Harbor gift shop (at least for newspaper geeks like me) is the reproduction of pages from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin's Dec. 7, 1941 extras. Fascinating!

Boston Phoenix media critic Dan Kennedy wants Boston to remain a two-daily town, so he has some suggestions for the Boston Herald. One of them is "Upgrade the Look."

Newcomers to Boston no doubt are perplexed when they hear old-timers refer to the Herald as "the Record." That’s a reference to the Record American, a Hearst-owned tabloid from a bygone era that, along with several other papers, eventually morphed into the modern Herald. Trouble is, the Herald really does look like the Record, if the Record could be exhumed, updated a bit, and printed in color.

Moreover, stories in the Herald have shrunk to news-brief length, with a hyperkinetic layout that gives readers little guide to what they’re likely to encounter on any given page. That goes against modern trends in newspaper design. I would tone down the presentation, air out the story lengths somewhat, and turn the Herald into more of a writer’s paper. The idea is to appeal to intelligent readers looking for both an alternative (or, more likely, a supplement) to the Globe and for something more substantial than the Metro.

These changes cannot be accomplished without a significant redesign. The Herald underwent a dramatic makeover in 1998, an effort led by well-known design consultant Ron Reason. The result was an attractive, colorful paper that looked more like a compact version of USA Today than a traditional urban tabloid. These days, about all that’s left of that effort are the white-on-blue nameplate and the body type.

Returning to the 1998 look would be a considerable improvement. But if Purcell and Chandler were asking me (ha!), I would go for something more understated, in keeping with the audience I’d be trying to reach. I’d certainly keep the tabloid format, but not the sensibility. Long Island’s Newsday takes a magazine-like approach that might be effective. Locally, the Boston Business Journal is a good example of a graphically interesting, elegant-looking paper that just happens to be printed at tab size. The BBJ look may be too quiet for a paper that has to sell itself on the newsstand every day. So I’d go with Newsday — with the Reason design as my fallback position.

Courtesy of Robb Montgomery, here are two extras from Chicago today.

(Mahalo, Robb!)

In a story about Chicago Tribune publisher David Hiller's efforts to increase readership, the Sun-Times reports that Hiller confirmed rumors the Trib is considering tab format. In the story's last paragraph (you guys buried the lead, Robb!) he says:

"Pretty much every big newspaper in the U.S. is looking at the tabloid format."

Here's the front page of today's edition of The Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

The Hindu, a 125-year-old, 1 million circulation daily in Chennai (Madras), India, unveiled a redesign (above right) today. N. Ram, editor-in-chief, writes in a front-page note:

A newspaper of record, a serious, quality daily offering a variety of news, features, analysis, and comment, wedded to the classical 'core' values of journalism: truth-telling, freedom and independence, justice, comprehensiveness, reliability, and social responsibility. But a newspaper committed to being contemporary in all aspects, including design. Among other things, this means being engaging and lively; responding to the changing interests and tastes of a growingly diverse 'interlocking public'; taking visual journalism to enhanced levels; seizing the exciting opportunities India, the world, and the local community offer a contemporary newspaper; and being systematic, put-together, and disciplined about all this.

'Contemporary-Classical,' this is how we see our place under the sun. And this is how we wish to be read and assessed by our three million readers, a growing proportion of them young men and women.

Garcia writes:

The purpose of this redesign is to offer a more contemporary, elegant, and functional newspaper: by giving pre-eminence to text, including (where appropriate and necessary) long text, but also by enabling photographs, other graphics, and white space to have an enhanced role on the pages; by giving the reader more legible typography, an efficient indexing or 'navigation' system, a clear hierarchy of stories, a new and sophisticated color palette; and by offering the advertiser better value and new opportunities.

The challenge when redesigning a classic, elegant, and traditional newspaper such as The Hindu is to make sure that one improves a good product, attracts younger readers, but does not take away all the wonderful attributes that have made this newspaper the icon it is within Indian journalism.

The typography is various weights of Interstate and Chronicle. More page images after the jump.

>Introducing our new look newspaper [The Hindu]

And for those who like such things, here's the "dingbat" from the front-page flag.

Looks like they may be getting some cojones down at The Miami Herald. Editor and Publisher reports today that Knight Ridder is considering turning the Herald into a tabloid.

"Are we looking at it? Absolutely," Herald Publisher Alberto Ibargüen told E&P from Miami. But he cautioned that no decisions have yet been reached.

Ibarguen said that that options under consideration include moving the entire Herald to tab size, moving just part of the paper, or retaining the broadsheet paper and starting a free tab. Ibargüen has kept an eye on the United Kingdom, where papers like The Independent and The Times of London transitioned from a broadsheet to a tabloid, he said.

"I need to emphasize that no decision has been made," Ibarguen said, adding that no formal plans have been presented to Knight Ridder. Before anything happens, an internal committee would need to address which options would fit the market while developing a business strategy. "We're not there yet," he said.

"In my heart, this should have been a tabloid. We did it as a tabloid. If they had what we call cojones, it would be a tabloid. It's going to take a lot of people to die, to retire, to whatever, for this paper to go tabloid."

I see the E&P article also says, "The Herald previously considered a move to tabloid size when planning its recent redesign, E&P reported in a June 2004 cover story" (emphasis mine). Or you could have read it at NewsDesigner.com in September 2003! (emphasis really mine)

>KR Considers 'Miami Herald' for Tabloid Switch [Editor & Publisher]

A couple of developments on the intrusive advertising front this week. First, in Monday's Australian, the Sports section was, apparently, wrapped by a four-page advertising section, the cover of which bears a strong resemblance to that day's actual Sports cover. The ad cover's on the left (the little 9-point "ADVERTISING" label on the top of the page is your tipoff; oh, and the HUGE-ASS TRUCK blasting its way through the page). This is the wrapper's centerspread ad they wanted you to see.

Second, and most horrifying, is this page:

In a page that will almost certainly be left out of next year's SND entries, the Spanish sports daily Marca, one of this year's World's Best-Designed Newspapers, on Wednesday actually incorporated the new logo of a telecom company into their main headline.

The blue "M" logo is for Movistar, which is, if I understand some of these Spanish financial articles correctly, the brand under which Telefo�nica Mo�viles is consolidating its operations in 13 Spanish-speaking countries after its acquisition earlier this year of BellSouth�s Latin American cellular operations. The company launched a $100 million ad campaign this week, and it looks like some of that cash bought some prime product placement in the editorial real estate of one of Spain's best-read newspapers. Kinda makes that hubbub over the jokey inclusion of a tiny little NewTek logo in a Dallas Morning News graphic seem a bit small, doesn't it?

Given the current love affair with European newspapers and some of the speechifying about ethics that went on in the DMN case, I'm curious to see the reaction here. Is one of the requirements to be one of the World's Best-Designed some sort of clear separation between advertising and editorial content? If not, should it be?

I'm no prude, here. I don't particularly like front-page ads, but as long as they're clearly identifiable as such, I don't see them as evil incarnate. But if this sort of product-placement advertising starts eroding the integrity of the editorial space, at what point does a publication cease being an actual "newspaper?"

The Bermuda Sun of Hamilton, Bermuda, introduced a redesign on Friday. The Sun's staff was helped by Bill Ostendorf's Creative Circle Media Consulting (Note to self: Consider career, latitude adjustment). A report on the project, and more before-and-after images, is here. Questions about margarita allowances and extensive "research" trips remain unanswered. As for the typography:

Nimrod text type is dramatically bigger looking than their old one (Times). It is also more efficient and saves space. Gotham Condensed was selected as the primary headline font to give editors better counts on headlines than the Interstate they had used before. We recycled Interstate,� using it for nameplates and page flags, and introduced Poynter Display to give the paper some serif display type for contrast.

>Bermuda Sun [Creative Circle Media Consulting]

This is being linked all over the internets today, but a couple of my favorite internet pals are part of a sparkly new site. It's Sploid, a rollicking, caffeinated, all-caps sorta site "with a tabloid mentality — top stories up top, played big, as fast as they break. If there's a political line, it's anarcho-capitalist: sniffing out hypocrisy and absurdity, whether from salon left or religious right." The editor is former Gawker editor (and fellow IHT "dingbat" lover) Choire Sicha, and the West Coast editor is Ken Layne, writer, musician and long-time internet character. Layne was one of the founders of the great old Tabloid.net site, so this whole thing is right up his seedy, dark alley.

Like the writing, Patric King's design is loud and gaudy and intemperate and totally inappropriate for civilized society. I like it!

In what should finally put this little kerfuffle to rest, the El Mundo artists who alleged their graphic was disqualified from the Malofiej competition have posted an apology at VisualMente. Under the heading "Urgent Explanation" the artists said:

Due to the discussion originated by our graphic “What do Blacks Have?”, we the main people involved on this issue want to make the following clear:

1. During the Malofiej awards closing dinner ceremony we heard about the disqualification of one of our graphics due to its title, which the jury misunderstood as racist.

2. A member of this graphic department sent the a sample of the graphic to the http://visualmente.blogspot.com/ blog, taking for granted that it had been disqualified.

3. We apologize for not requesting confirmation of such disqualification at that same moment. We also want to apologize to those who may have been affected or involved in such a misunderstanding, specially to those members of the Malofiej jury such as Michael Agar and other people involved as Norberto Baruch B.

Juancho Cruz
Emilio Amade

I asked Steve Dorsey, Detroit Free Press design & graphics director and Malofiej 12 + 1 jury member, to shed some light on the contentions that the El Mundo graphic below was disqualified from the competition:

For the record:

As Michael Agar already said, the entry in question was never disqualified - in fact, it made to the final round of a very competitive group. It was eventually voted on - and voted out, like hundreds of other entries in the
competition.

The graphic was only one part of a multi-part portfolio entry.

I was one of only two U.S. judges from the print segment of the competition (there was a third in the online segment). It's worth noting that the discussion about an entry being "disqualified by the U.S. judges" is sheer invention. There was a panel of 10 judges from numerous countries in the print segment. None of the more than 1,300 entries was disqualified, to my knowledge. And any voting required a majority of the jury to pass.

Thanks to Gert at VisualJournalism.com for bearing witness and trying to set the record straight.

For Malofiej organisation, and this is an official statement, I would like to support Michael Agar's opinion as president of the jury and the rest of judges. The graphic from El Mundo was never disqualified, simply it didn't win. Debate about its quality as part of a portfolio was completely normal. I was never informed of a problem. I understand different viewpoints about such a topic as racism, but please do not imagine a problem where there is nothing.

In the wake of the disqualification of the Dallas Morning News infographic from the SND contest, it has come to light that an infographic from Spain's El Mundo was disqualified from the Malofiej competition judged last month. VisualMente reports that the graphic, titled "¿Qué tienen los negros?" ("What do blacks have?") and which attempts to explain some physiological differences between races, was DQ'd because the North American judges thought it racist.

The artist, Emilio Amade, defended his work in VisualMente:

Agreed, the headline could have been different, but here in Spain "los negros" is used with no negative or contemptuous intention. But it sounded bad to the judges, and that is everything. ...

I imagine that the difference of cultures between the judges (different nationalities) was the main cause of this discussion.

Rodrigo Sánchez, art director of El Mundo's magazines, also jumps to Amade's defense. He, also, points out that "los negros" is not a derogatory term in Spain and goes on to decry P.C. language.

In fact we have not yet invented a politically correct term to replace the word that better defines a person "of color". "Of color" is pedantic and affected and, thank God, we don't yet use "afrohispano," which would sound ridiculous. ...

Therefore the censorship of the graphic on the physical differences between races is, simply, absurd. Certainly the headline could have been different, but in this case we wanted to make a wink to the reader with the reference to the folksong whose refrain says: "¿Qué será lo que tiene el negro...?"

I haven't seen any response from the judges, but I certainly hope there's more to the story than this. If North American judges pitched the entry simply because the Spanish word "negros" looked too much to them like an English word that has a lot of negative baggage, they really need to re-examine the standards they're using when they stand in judgment of work from a different culture.

So if any of the judges read this, please hit the "comments" link and give us your side.

Update: In the comments, Michael Agar, president of the Malofiej 2005 jury, says that the graphic was not disqualified; it just didn't win.

May I add clarity to this misunderstanding... this work from el Mundo was and never has been disqualified from the Malofiej 12+1 infographics awards, infact this work, which was part of a portfolio from el Mundo – made it to a very competitive category final.

I remember the discussion to concentrate on the usual stuff. Was it a clear display? Well-rendered? A good infographic? Some judges made a remark that such a topic would probably not be allowed at their paper. And finally someone questioned if the theory is at all correct. The graphic however was never awarded anything – it suffered the same destiny as the majority of graphics sent in for a competition. It was simply put aside – and not disqualified at all. I didn’t even hear anyone suggesting such a drastic step.

Some pages from Europe:

Spain's ABC, La Voz de Galicia, El Pais and El Mundo.

France's Aujourd'hui and Le Monde.

Norway's Aftenposten and Austria's Kleine Zeitung.

Portugal's Publico and Britain's The Observer.

L'Osservatore Romano is the official newspaper of the Vatican.

Here are some Latin and South American papers.

Brazil's Gazeta do Povo and O Globo.

Brazil's Zero Hora and Chile's El Mercurio.

El Salvador's El Grafico and La Prensa Grafica.

Guatemala's Prensa Libre and Honduras' La Prensa.

Mexico's A.M., Diario de Yucatán, Milenio Diario, Provincia, El Mañana and Reforma.

Peru.21 and Venezuela's El Universal.

Update: And Argentina's Clarin and El Mañana from Tamaulipas, Mexico.

San Francisco Chronicle Deputy Managing Editor John Curley has a Flickr set of photos from last night's production at the Chron. Including Nanette Bisher!

Here are papers from Krakow and Warsaw.

Update: Dziennik Baltycki, published in Gdansk.

For my non-newspaper friends out there, a story like the death of the pope is unlike most big events. With something like Sept. 11, it's almost entirely reactive. It happens, and what you do is relatively straightforward: You gather all the stories you can; you take the paper up in size as much as you need or as much as is possible; you edit the stories and pick the photos and design the pages and create the graphics and get the paper out the door. It's all very adrenaline-fueled.

The death of somebody like the pope or Ronald Reagan is different. I started working on Reagan and pope pages five years ago. You have meetings and decide how much you'll do and what stories you'll write or the wires might move and you pick photos and design pages. And then you wait. Every time he takes a turn, you pull it out and you rethink and change some things. And then, of course, when it happens, all your plans rarely survive contact with reality fully intact. Somebody invariably comes up with a good idea in five minutes that didn't occur to anybody else in five years. And with the pope, there was the additional wrinkle of his lingering for a couple of days. So you know it's going to happen soon, and you've got stuff ready to go. But, of course, it could happen anytime, and there are myriad production considerations. What do we do if he goes at 10 p.m. and we can't take the paper up eight pages? How much of the run can we get if he goes at 1 a.m.? What if we can only get one color inside page? If he dies overnight what do we do with the Sunday bulldog that goes to press at 6 a.m. Saturday but is usually off the floor by midnight Friday?

So with all that in mind, I'll be posting some pope pages today. I'll probably concentrate a bit more on non-U.S. pages that you may not find elsewhere. Just about every American front page (and many others as well) can be found at the Newseum. (Update: News Page Designer now has a pope category. Also, Poynter is planning a book of front pages, much like they did with Sept. 11.)

Here's how some of the Italian newspapers look today. I don't know the particulars of these papers' deadlines, but keep in mind his death was announced at about 10 p.m. local time. These papers were rolling on the press within hours.

The inside spreads from La Stampa and Corriere della Sera after the jump.

La Stampa

Corriere della Sera

In the comments to one of last week's tabloid posts, Alan Jacobson takes a dissenting view of the tabloid "craze."

Will your paper convert to tab? Nope.

In the past year, Editor & Publisher and DESIGN ran cover stories on broadsheet papers converting to tab. Last week, The New York Times did their story about this new trend.

But I promise you, this nascent craze will not take hold in the U.S. But first, let's look at what the press is saying and why they're wrong in propagating this prediction.

All three publications used a single designer as the source for their stories - Mario Garcia. Now I have nothing but respect and admiration for Mario, especially because he always treats me with respect even when I disagree with him. Which I find myself doing once again.

These stories cited the 15 tab conversions Mario's company has directed. But these stories did not emphasize that 14 of these conversions occurred outside the U.S., where newspapers follow a different economic model.

Deep in the jump of The New York Times story, you learn that:

"American newspapers rely on advertising for about 85 percent of their revenues, while Europeans rely on it less so, for 60 to 70 percent of total revenues."

Bottom line? Newspapers in Europe make their money buy selling the paper. In the U.S. newspapers make their money selling advertising. That's why our inside pages are chock full of ugly ads and European newspapers have SND award-winning sections with beautiful inside pages.

So in this country advertisers call the shots and they prefer broadsheet papers, at least for their ads in the core product. Of course, almost all broadsheet papers have some tab sections, but U.S. advertisers and readers prefer that the core product be in broadsheet format.

How do I know? Because that's what readers and advertisers tell me. Before beginning a redesign in any market, I interview readers and advertisers to learn their preferences. They say tabs are fine for targeted products, but not the core product. Advertisers prefer the larger size. Readers cite the tabloid stigma.

But enough of this nonesense about calling this format "compact" rather than "tab," because tab has the "tabloid" stigma. What did Shakespeare say? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ...? Frankly, I think these kinds of euphemisms smell.

Want more proof? Look at the one tab conversion Mario's company directed in this country. The results were so bad that the paper was sold just a couple years after the new tab design was launched.

And the Jersey Journal's planned tab conversion? The Jersey Journal is a Newhouse newspaper. (Newark Star-Ledger, Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Oregonian, etc.) If it weren't for the fact that the Newhouse family has a soft spot in their hearts for this paper - and that their company is not publically traded, with no fiduciary responsibility to stockholders - this paper would have been shut down years ago due to the loss of 75% of their circulation. Their tab conversion is a last-ditch effort. It's a Hail Mary play. They have nothing to lose.

Now back to the recent story in Editor & Publisher which included coverage of other new tab products, such as the Reds in Chicago, Quick in Dallas and the Metros. Their conclusion? The jury's still out.

The jury's still out? Gimme a break. Some of these products have been out there for years. I believe they learned in Chicago that they can't charge for these things - they gotta give them away. And I believe in Dallas they learned that most advertisers don't believe in free products. Recently, NPR quoted a Wall Street Analyst who said "it doesn't bode well for any industry when they need to give their product away."

'Nuff said.

Tab conversion? Fughedabowdit.

Some of us consultants are insistent on the change of format. This is what has happened with "The Independent" in England, which has been a success. I believe that "The Independent" had little to lose; because it was in a nose dive, the newspaper risked less. And with a little copying or imitating that "The Independent" has done, all the consultants of the world recommend that all newspapers change to tabloid format, as if that was the solution to all the problems. ... When all the newspapers go to tabloid, what it will happen later? Change them back to broadsheet again? And later again?

If the editor of the Times [of London] can get past going tabloid - then, I believe, so can American journalists. It will be similar to the widespread color press upgrades that USAT color technology prompted 20 years ago.
And the 50-inch web converts of the past several years . . .

I believe the problem for U.S journalists embracing tabloid conversion is really one of psychology. e.g. Is this the specter that springs to mind when someone mentions 'Tabloid' under their breath at your broadsheet?

It doesn't have to be - but I can only speak from personal experience.