DISCOVERING BERLINER

American newspapers are discovering... the Berliner format!

Read this sensational news here.

The critics say that is a bad move because advertiser will be pay by inches not by pages.

Oh, boy, how this can be a serious argument when American daily newspapers are almost all of them local monopolies, not competing against any other local newspaper?

A page is a page.

It is like asking TV advertisers to pay according to the size of the TV screen of their audiences.

Readers rule.

And they like compact formats.

Listen to Sammy Papert, who is CEO of Belden Associates, an excellent newspaper research company, which has done research on the format issue.

"When Belden has asked audiences if they would like or prefer a tabloid format over a broadsheet, the response has been overwhelming," he says.

"There have only been a couple newspapers, in Bismarck and Lafayatte, where the core product has changed from a broadsheet to a tabloid.

But all the new titles, all the young adult titles, all the free titles are tabloid, and it's not just because of newsprint.

The market demands it."

And while new presses are expensive, he notes that ever-declining circulation is even more so.

He is absolutely right.

Wait and see: this is just the beginning of a long journey where you will heard all kind of non-sense arguments in order to keep the status-quo and not change.

Well, we have used for many years a great slogan that we found in The New York times:

Innovation is irresistible.

Progress is inevitable.

Resistance is futile.