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Baltimore Sun tabloid

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by VictoryGallop, Dec 3, 2007.

  1. Chi City 81

    Chi City 81 Guest

    I haven't seen the tab, but I like the Sun's sports section.
     
  2. wickedwritah

    wickedwritah Guest

    The paper's redesign a year or two ago was bold. Don't necessarily like it, but they put themselves out there.

    And there hasn't been too much slicing and dicing there in terms of the print product. They put out a quality section every day.
     
  3. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    Agreed. They give the reader meat, which is more than a lot of metros can say these days.
     
  4. OwlWithVowel

    OwlWithVowel Member

    I've seen this, and here's the question I have:

    Why do it? Just to say you're doing something different? To create "buzz?" To save some space? (Bing bing bing)

    Essentially, what they have is SSDP -- Same Stuff, Different Package.
     
  5. oldhack

    oldhack Member

    Maybe so, but it could also be that readers like it. Time will tell.

    BTW, the late Balto News-American, a PM paper, tried a morning sports tab for a while in the early '80s. They had a pretty good sports staff, but not enough horses to make both papers work. Curiously, they had the No. 1 sports columnist in town, John Steadman, but didn't use him in the sports tab. Ancient history.
     
  6. steveu

    steveu Well-Known Member

    I thought it looked pretty good... I'm wondering why more papers don't go tab in our endless effort to save space (if I never hear the words "space cuts" together in the same sentence again I'll be very happy).

    St. Louis' paper is all tab on Saturday and it's pretty good. I think Rocky Mountain in Denver is great... I know tab isn't everyone's cup of tea, but done the right way it can be good.
     
  7. OTD

    OTD Well-Known Member

    The good news is he's borrowing the two bucks from the employee pension fund.
     
  8. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    I don't think saving space is a factor here.

    Two tab pages do not equal a single broadsheet page. We learned that very early in the process. You're losing all the real estate between the pages, what is now page gutter.

    In order to keep the space we had before, we had to work it out that we got "2x + 2" pages. Take the number of broadsheet pages you would normally have for that day, double that number and add 2. We usually run between 20-24, down to 16 only on Monday nights, and 36-40 for Sunday.

    Frankly, SSDP is the way to go sometimes. You would be surprised how many subjects get perfect treatment on a single tabloid page, as opposed to having to fight for space on a broadsheet page with 2-3 other stories.

    One thing which people thought would be a problem going in was our ability to accomodate longer stories. It turns out that we can handle those better in the tabloid format than we ever did in broadsheet. The secret simply was this: You can treat any pair of facing pages like a double-truck, with the exception, of course, being that you can't put any art on the gutter. And if you use the true double-truck in the center of the section, you can even do that.
     
  9. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    And helmets. Lots and lots of helmets. ;)

    I thought the Sun re-design was absolutely hideous. It almost made the paper unreadable. Everything runs together and nothing is distinctive except the lack of distinction. Just my two cents.
     
  10. PHINJ

    PHINJ Active Member

    You can put art in the gutter even if it's not a double truck.
     
  11. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    You and your damn helmets. Go read some copy, looser. ;)

    I picked up the Sun last night and looked it over. The B-W inside pages don't help one bit, but I might be a little spoiled in that regard.

    I'm not quite sure how you mean that. Are you talking about the outside gutter of one page, or are you talking about the art breaking over facing, non-connected pages?
     
  12. VJ

    VJ Member

    I wasn't the biggest fan of their redesign but it works MUCH better in a tab format than as a broadsheet. Two days in, I already think it's a huge improvement.
     
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