Margaret Buchanan, president and publisher of The Enquirer, told me reader response to print prototypes indicated that the audience wanted their newspaper to change. Having already cut staff through layoffs and reduced jobs through centralizing design, the company, with the two papers, is also outsourcing printing and literally shrinking the size of its product.īoth The Dispatch and The Enquirer say the move is about serving the needs and habits of their readers. The Enquirer’s shift in paper size - the new version will measure 10 1/4″ x 14 1/2″ - is, unsurprisingly, about economics: Gannett has been looking to gain efficiencies largely by way of reduction. Under the terms of an agreement between the two papers, the family-owned Dispatch will begin printing the Gannett-owned Cincinnati Enquirer (as well as its northern Kentucky edition, The Kentucky Enquirer) next fall, with The Dispatch going compact in 2013. And it’s emblematic of a new willingness among newspapers to take risks with their most precious assets - which are typically, in financial terms, still their print products. Leaping from a format you’ve published in for more than a century is a dramatic step. That might seem like a small change it’s not. Take The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Columbus Dispatch, both of which recently announced plans to switch their printing formats from classic broadsheet to a new compact style more akin to a tabloid, but with sections similar to a traditional paper. For newspapers, rolling the dice doesn’t always involve paywalls.

Cincinnati enquirer newspaper