The Guardian’s tabloid switch is a big mistake

‘Since you’re here…we have a small favour to ask’. These words may ring a bell for you – or just sound the spam alarm, coming as they do at the end of any Guardian online piece. For times are hard in Graunville: in recent years, the Guardian has lost tens of millions annually and, as a result, the paper has got out the begging bowl. Now its editor, Katharine Viner, has announced the latest cost-cutting ruse: lopping the paper down – from January next year – to a tabloid format. This is a great shame. Viner claims that the shrinkage would preserve ‘the same amount of journalism’ and went on to justify the change by saying:

The role of a newspaper in people’s lives is changing all the time. The role of a tangible, physical object in a digital world is really interesting to think about what’s that for, so maybe it’s more explanatory, maybe it’s more keepable, maybe it’s more visual beautiful – that’s the way we’re thinking about it.

It’s true that print media does need to do something different with the emergence of lightning-paced online news.