Berliner

March 23, 2005 8:33 AM

Berliner? Or broadsheet. Or tab? Your newspaper may be changing, its looks, its ownership and how it markets itself. Do you value or even need your local paper? Or can you and your neighbors do it yourself? (Scroll down to "backfence" link.)
posted by etaoin (12 comments total)

I like my local paper(s). I like taking the sections apart to share with the kids. I like being able to cut out articles. I like taking sections with me on the bus, or the plane, or to the bathroom.

However, I find I get a lot of my news via the Internet and NPR news. I use the paper as more of a follow-up or a way to get more details, and as a way to get local perspectives.

I don't like the tabloid format very much. I find it awkward to hold and difficult to get to different sections. But that's just me, I guess.
posted by jazon at 8:43 AM on March 23, 2005

Backfence.com (the link in the article is bad) was previously discussed here.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:14 AM on March 23, 2005

I have had various flirtations with physical periodicals of various sorts, including newspapers, over the last ten years. But since the Internet became big, I have not had any true desire to get anything from the physical format anymore... I mean, I do it when I have to, when there is content I want or need that I can't get anywhere else (like yesterday I bought an interview magazine for an exclusive interview with the singer & songwriter ofone of my favorite bands).

Give me news.google.com any day, until it gets unusable, and then give me what springs up in its place.

That being said, I don't have anything against the compact format as long as they cut the front so that I can flip pages.
posted by sninky-chan at 9:14 AM on March 23, 2005

I like the tabloid format over the larger broadsheet style. The Times and The Independent have both gone tabloid in the UK and, although I don't have a regular paper, if I'm going to buy a paper, I'll grab one of those over a traditional broadsheet.
posted by TheDonF at 9:19 AM on March 23, 2005

Kind of like Jazon here--I quite like the physical nature of a paper. Much prefer doing the crossword in my easy chair, rather than online, with either a cup of coffee or a cocktail at my elbow.

We get the broadsheet Washington Post and Washington Times and the (free) tabloid Examiner delivered daily...and I pick up the broadsheet NY Times and tabloid NY Post later on most days.

It's miles easier to read a tabloid on the Metro than a broadsheet.

And I get a lot of other information via the Net, obviously, as does everybody who posts or lurks on Metafilter.
posted by 1016 at 9:32 AM on March 23, 2005

I hate my local paper -- I'd like them if they didn't charge the same price for an online subscription as a real one and just throw away the newspapers (seriously, check their site, and yes, most of those papers just end up in the trash). That and stuff that *should* be advertiser supported (and probably is) still isn't free, like movie listings.

They're almost dead, anyhow, seeing as they sold off their expensive building to move into a low rent area.
posted by shepd at 9:55 AM on March 23, 2005

Berliner? They print these newspapers on jelly donuts? Now that's what I call market synergy.
posted by orthogonality at 10:32 AM on March 23, 2005

Backfence just seems like a clever repackaging to me:

"Their site will be an aggregator of 'tiny scale' sites where you can find news as small as the cast list for the school play, or 'who knows a good plumber?'

Both of those items were covered recently by my friendly neighborhood Yahoo group.

I've been thinking about things like this for a while now in the context of the continual stream of griping about how "they" own the media, which seems pointless to me after a point. So they own it-now what are you going to do about it? One solution-and granted, it's a long-term one-might be to create your own media.

This idea looks promising, as does this one , though either could just be a clever repackaging of something a dedicated group could put together themselves using a content management system like Plone. Perhaps the proprietary interface comes with a proprietary gaggle of lawyers!
posted by halcyon_daze at 10:37 AM on March 23, 2005

The problem for newspapers is that so many of them don't seem to realize that their days are numbered, that they're so befuddled by this new "internets" technology.

Your major metros are ahead of the curse; your smaller-town papers are, in some cases, way behind it - even though their readers probably have Internet access to a similar degree that city-dwellers do, and are learning to get more and more of their info online.

But this grand facade of journalism can crumble, for all I care (and I say that as a print journalist). For too long journalists have fancied themselves as players; the aesthetic that the press is supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable has been flipped on its head. It has become the role of journalism to buttress power rather than question it.

And the sooner this sort of bullshit masquerading as the public interest goes, the better.
posted by kgasmart at 10:55 AM on March 23, 2005

There are still two main areas in which newspapers can, and should, excell:
1. Local news. Yes, I realize most of this is gossip, but it's the kind of stuff, especially in a small town, that you can't find online:
2. Long form indepth investigative reporting. This is were papers can truly excell.

Unfortunately, outfits like Gannett keep buying up papers and trying to make them all look the same.

There's always the Sun Page 3 topless birds gambit if all else fails.
posted by berek at 11:46 AM on March 23, 2005

I read my local paper on Sundays. The hard copy lends itself to a more leisurely read. Interestingly, they went through a redesign last year which included a narrower web, not quite as much as Berliner which is 6" narrower than the broadsheet, but enough so that the decreased margins and more compressed type face make it less pleasurable to read.

As for tabloids, I've never really liked the format. The Chicago Sun-Times has been a tabloid for as long as I remember, dating back to when Marshall Field owned the paper. Though it's arguably easier to hold the smaller format when reading it on a train, you lose the whole benefit of reading the news in sections. There's no "hand me the sports section" in a tabloid.

Most of my news comes from the web, though I don't rely on the major newspaper sites as much as I used to.
posted by SteveInMaine at 1:42 PM on March 23, 2005

Not only the Times and the Independent have gone compact in the UK, the Guardian has announced that it is adopting the Berliner format too.

One of its aforementioned rivals thinks it may have a problem switching formats (they would say that wouldn't they).
posted by MrMerlot at 3:34 PM on March 23, 2005