Chicago Tribune, LA Times cut print size

Posted by Savita Sauvin on February 2, 2010 at 5:55 PM

To save on print production costs and to streamline operations, Tribune Co. papers the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are rolling out changes this week and next. The LA Times today launched LATExtra, a new section that includes local and California coverage, as well as late-breaking news. It has also trimmed an inch off its print version, and is now 11 inches wide, LA Times Blogs reported today.

The Chicago Tribune, meanwhile, will also trim an inch from the width of its newspaper beginning Monday, according to MediaPost.

The circumstances surrounding LATExtra, which will run Monday through Saturday, led to criticism last month when the announcement was made. The deadline for the LA Times' front page was moved up a few hours, to 6 p.m., because the Times closed its Orange County printing plant and sold its print run time slot at the remaining plant to the Wall Street Journal. Therefore, late-breaking news is now published in LATExtra.

However, Publisher Eddy Hartstein wrote last month that the LA Times was "completing a significant investment in our Olympic production facility - making it state-of-the-art, increasing color capacity and allowing us to shut down the Orange County presses. This is being done in tandem with our shift to an emerging newspaper-standard 44 [inches] web width from the current 48 [inches]."

Although late-breaking news is being printed earlier, the sports section will continue with its customary late deadline, myFOXla reported.

Times editor Russ Stanton told a reader in an e-mail that the LA Times' will print West Coast editions of the Journal and New York Post in "a little more than an hour, and it has no effect on what we are doing with the Los Angeles Times." Earlier deadlines are necessary "to save money so we can continue to deliver you a world-class news and features report each and everyday," he wrote, according to myFOXla.

Regarding the change of broadsheet size of the Chicago Tribune, editor Gerould W. Kern told Media Post: "This new page size is becoming the industry standard, and many newspapers across the country already have made this change or will do so this year. The narrower page reduces our costs, enabling us to bring you the news coverage you value."

As an effect of the transition to a smaller broadsheet size, columns will be moved, headlines and photographs will be smaller, several comic strips have been dropped and new ones will be added. However, the font size of articles will be unchanged.