EXTRA: No more “tab” for Trib

The idea of the tabloid format for the Chicago Tribune (rather than its long-standing broadsheet format) will soon be no more.



It just looks better



And a part of me is very pleased to learn that. Because I’m not one of those people who gets a newspaper home-delivered. I pick my copies up out of a newsbox or a newsstand (or the occasional convenience store).

WHICH MEANS I have been subjected to the Tribune’s tabloid edition ever since is became reality just over two years ago. It has gotten to the point where I don’t really read a hard copy of the Tribune unless I happen to be at a public library that subscribes – or if through some distribution error my local store got broadsheet copies of the newspaper rather than tabloid ones.

Now I don’t oppose the tabloid format (those smaller pages) for newspapers. It can be a convenient format, and the smaller pages can allow for some interesting graphics elements that make for better-looking pages that give big stories a real punch!

But reading the Tribune in tabloid always made it seem like a lesser paper to the Chicago Sun-Times, which has been a tabloid for all but its first year of existence in the mid-1940s (when the Chicago Sun and the Daily Times merged into the Chicago Sun & Times – before dropping the ampersand for a hyphen).

The Sun-Times is comfortable with the format and knows how to use it to best advantage. The Tribune never got a clue.

LOOKING AT A tabloid edition of the Tribune always made me feel like I was looking at a 14-year-old girl who has tarted herself up with too much makeup and an extremely short skirt out of the belief that it makes her look older and more appealing.

Chicago's real tabloid

It was really just ridiculous, and I doubt that it caused the newspaper reader equivalent of a horny 18-year-old boy (who that girl was trying to attract) to take the paper seriously.



So it was with joy that I read about how the tabloid edition will disappear after Friday. Next week, I should be able to get ahold of a broadsheet copy of the paper with ease.

Which means the Tribune circulation will increase by at least one copy per day – mine!

AND IF YOU absolutely need to see Tribune-inspired copy in a tabloid format, then read Red Eye!

Or at least look at the pictures.

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EXTRA: Somebody’s confused

First, the Chicago Tribune up and goes and endorses a Democrat for president of the United States. Then, the Tribune is thinking of becoming a tabloid-format newspaper (weekdays only).

All I can say is that this newspaper seems determined to show the world that it will not be restricted by its past, even though that past is what gives the Tribune much of the character that made it unique in the world of newsgathering organizations.

TAKE A LOOK at the graphic to be found here (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/towerticker/2009/01/chicago-tribune.html) that shows just how a tabloid-format Tribune compares to a broadsheet format. Then come back to the Chicago Argus and ponder this point, which is based on my own observation and knowledge of newspaper formats.

Is the problem with that tabloid Tribune page the fact that there aren’t enough graphics? In short, that it would be a paper that wishes it were a broadsheet.

And isn’t much of the problem with the recently redesigned Tribune broadsheet newspaper is that the graphics are overdone to the point where one gets the impression that somebody wishes the paper were truly a tabloid?

Basically, is the problem with the Chicago Tribune these days a matter of the people in charge not having a clue as to what kind of publication they want to be?

IF ANYTHING, TRYING to determine the answer to that question is more important than coming up with new formats or graphic elements or any other nonsense.

But at least the Tribune had enough sense when it came to last year’s presidential endorsements. Just think of how ridiculous and out-of-touch with its home city the newspaper would have looked had it persisted with its rigid Republican endorsements and backed Sarah Palin for vice president?

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Chicago Tribune management seems to think that commuters who are turned off by the Sun-Times’ slight history of being liberal will want to read a tabloid (http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=156872) version of the one-time World’s Greatest Newspaper.