PITY POOR AGATE, FOR WEB WILL MAKE SURE ITS DAYS ARE FEW

From stock tables to classifieds, little letters have a big future on-line

Newspapers traditionally have relied upon the smallest of type faces to present the most important of information.

Whether it's classified advertising, sports scores, business results, weather or television listings, we set the type down at a minuscule size.

"Agate" is what we call it, though today it's rarely the size as defined from the hot metal era – back then, it was little bigger than five-point type, set 14 lines to the inch. Today, type as large as 10-point can be defined as agate.

In the days when the newspaper was the only delivery mechanism for vast quantities of recent detailed data – and I'm going back only 18 months – we filled up our newspaper pages with the stuff. Out of the 60-page paper that was delivered to my doorstep April 6, 20 of those pages could be considered agate.

One-third. It's one-third of a daily paper that's about to go away.

As our readers gray – and, it must be conceded that the majority of existing readers are old and getting older – the size of type in newspapers will have to grow. But it would be foolish to make classifieds or weather or TV listings bigger, because all of these things work better as on-line products.

Whether it's tapping in a few codes to get not just yesterday's high, low and price-earnings ratio of a stock, but its entire recent history (including commentary) as well as Security and Exchange Commission filings – or finding out what the weather is right now in Belgrade – on-line is an infinitely superior delivery mechanism over newsprint for some information.

You go directly to the information, rather than having to hunt for it.

In the near future, newspapers will be confronted with having to revamp the agate pages – whether that confrontation is initiated by readers tired of squinting or whether it is mandated by designers anxious to win awards. Either way, newspaper managers will have to decide whether to devote more energy to revamping agate or to developing a method of weaning readers away from the print product and onto the on-line product.

This NewsInc. touches on the issue from both ends of the spectrum: Senior Editor Pete Wetmore checks in at the Tribune Co. in regard to what it's doing in terms of television lists (both as a provider, through its Tribune Media Services, and a consumer, through its Chicago Tribune) while Correspondent Jon Fine takes a look at the trend toward 50-inch web widths, a cut of almost 10 percent in the width of a newspaper page.

Constantly striving to save expense dollars, many publishers are moving to the narrower newspaper page to cut back on newsprint consumption (admittedly, some have moved to the narrower page for aesthetic reasons). What better way to save newsprint than to take that one-third of the newspaper and not print it?

On the TV listings side, the Chicago Tribune has elected to eliminate the codes for VCR Plus+ from its daily and book listings to be able to get more stations listed (the paper also saves the expense of the VCR Plus+ listing fee).

Coincidentally, Tribune Co. has made an investment in a new consumer electronics device that marries computer technology with TV: the Replay system does digital recordings of TV shows that eliminate many of the vagaries of the videocassette recorder (including the ubiquitous flashing 12:00 seen in most homes). The user merely asks that all the Clint Eastwood movies showing this week be recorded; no punching in of numbers or complex codes. (These machines will be available next Christmas for probably less than $500.)

At a time newspapers are seeking more and more ways to save money in printing – and at a time when more and more consumers are buying computers for home use – how long will it be before agate type is eliminated? My guess is, not too long.

The problem, of course, will be to direct those computer users to your newspaper's on-line site for that information. And even the biggest type won't help that.

– David M. Cole

Inside ...

• News from Tribune points to new links between media
• Slim, trim 50-inch webs are gaining favor among U.S. publishers
• Did you know the way to San Jose is quite expensive?
• Newspapers keep the Melissa virus safely on the outside
• Editors' groups suggest "diversity" be spelled new way: a-c-c-u-r-a-c-y
• New web tool makes ads simply go away
• Persons

From NEWSINC., April 12, 1999, Copyright © 1999, The Cole Group. All Rights Reserved.