Today’s Home-News Tribune looks more like a newsletter than a newspaper, an emaciated shell of its former self. The same goes for The Star-Ledger, the New York tabloids — just about every newspaper out there.
As newspaper revenue — mostly in the form of classified and retail ad revenue, but also subscriptions — has dried up, newspapers cut costs. Reporting staffs have been gutted, bureaus closed, editors let go. These cuts, rightly, have gotten the lion’s share of the public notice. But papers have also taken other measures that have, while reducing costs, made their product less appealing.
The reduction in web size — the size of the press and paper used — has made meaningless the term broadsheet. Papers like THNT and others are barely larger than tabloids, lacking in news space and telegraphing to readers that there is just not a whole lot to read any longer.
Hank Kalet 