Columbus Dispatch Saves Time, Money and Jobs In Ohio

New communications technologies are continually bringing us new ways of using print media and one of the most fascinating is the gradual change of American newspapers. The Kindle® and other eReaders may be responsible. Broadsheet newspapers are difficult to hold and we end up folding them several ways and losing sections. They fall on the floor and the cat comes running in from another room, jumps on them, and slides over the hardwood floor to his next destination. Cats cannot do that with Kindles®. A "smaller" newspaper may be in order.

The Columbus Dispatch in Central Ohio has planned to change from its long-time broadsheet format to a more compact print media. It will keep its familiar sections, while taking its place as the first print paper globally to employ the three-around printing method. The change form hand-set type to computers was huge, but this is bigger. Presses will be converted during Autumn 2011.

This is a job-saving and jobs creation move on the part of the Dispatch as well, capturing business form at least two other nearby cities. The Columbus paper agrees with the Gannett Co. Inc. to print both The Cincinnati Enquirer and Kentucky Enquirer in the three-around technique by 2012.

This brings a new, more compact version of print media to the reporting of the 2012 US Presidential Race and the NASA/SpaceX/Other Mission to Mars. Sales and circulation will likely increase.

Printing a broadsheet newspaper requires the use of large cylinders upon which the newsprint (broadsheet paper) travels around.

In the method of three-around printing, the cylinders of a printing press print three sheets of paper instead of two, all in just one revolution of a cylinder. This method saves time, material, and money, while using existing presses.

The three-around method was perfected and marketed back in 2008 and The Columbus Dispatch is the first to opt in. Overall, increasing numbers of American newspapers are reducing the physical size of their publications as have Europeans news publications.

The Big Change

For readers, page size will be the biggest change, making the paper more manageable:

• Old Size: 22" by 11.5" page
• New Size:14.6" by 10.5" page (about the size of a sheet from a long legal pad)

The local newspaper here has recently increased in price nearly every year since the late 2000s and many readers have dropped or reduced subscriptions. Others read it online by subscription. Still others read it in the local coffee houses. Offering smaller pages and more color in a daily and weekend newspaper, the Dispatch will hopefully maintain or reduce its current price. Jobs at the paper are expected to increase.This is all good to hear and will likely keep newspapers alive for a few more decades into the 21st Century.

Another step that is in discussions with newspapers around the country is the addition of Youtube-like videos into hardcopy stories.

I saw the first video resume here in 1994, made to the size of an old A-drive floppy disk and that was a gigantic technology breakthrough. The event was on the national news and the young man that developed and sent his resume in this manner was hired immediately by a local ad and graphics agency.

Now, we can have a video in the newspaper.

The new size of the newspaper will put in at about the size of The National Enquirer. The new Dispatch may, in fact, sell more copies on a stand beside that tabloid than it does now on a shelf under the magazines in the grocery store. It will take up less space and be easier to hold and read, but the cat will have lost a mode of transportation.