They shrank the paper! Inquirer goes Compact
FOR the detractors of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, it was a con-firmation of their worst suspicions: the newspaper had gone tabloid.
In an unprecedented move by a Manila-based newspaper, the nation’s largest selling paper has made a smaller version of the broadsheet and is distributing this in key areas in Luzon. Launched on Nov. 14 last year, the paper is known as the Inquirer Compact, wearing a size that is not quite tabloid but definitely not broadsheet.
“The most important articles and sections of the Inquirer are included in Inquirer Compact,” according to the Inquirer website. Roughly measuring 22.6 x 15 inches (574 mm x 381 mm) per spread, the size of Inquirer Compact “is in between the size of a broadsheet and a tabloid,” the Inquirer website said. Published daily in Manila and distributed in provincial Luzon, Inquirer Compact has 16 pages and costs P10. The broadsheet, which has more pages and sections, costs higher at P18.
“Shorter stories, more visual treatment, bigger play. That’s the future of newspapers, and the future is here—right in your hands,” Inquirer Compact said on its first issue. The paper described itself as “a new national newspaper with a strong regional orientation, designed for the convenience of readers-on-the-go.”
Sizing up the market
In an interview with PJR Reports, executive editor Abe-lardo Ulanday said the move to publish a smaller version of the Inquirer was a “management decision.”
He would not say if the company plans to eventually drop its broadsheet version.
“I am not saying that the Inquirer would go compact, but let’s leave it at that,” Ulanday says. The Inquirer wants to see first how “this thing will work out,” he added.
The plan to come out with Inquirer Compact started “probably a year and a half” ago. The management, he said, looked into the future and “thought about it when such prestigious papers like The Times of London and the Independent (another British broadsheet) transformed their papers into compact (size)” in 2003.
Ulan-day, who was also the first editor of the nation’s first free tabloid Inquirer Libre, started looking into how the Inqui-rer could “make use of the phe-nomenon” and coordinated with the Inquirer’s Bu-siness Develop-ment Group.
The Indepen-dent, whose circu-lation was more than 400,000 in 1990, started producing both broad-sheet and tabloid (or compact) versions in 2003 to increase sales. The Times quickly followed. The following year, both papers stopped appearing in broadsheet size. The decision proved to be a wise one as both papers claimed to have increased circulation after moving to compact size.
Indeed, broadsheets around the world are beginning to look at the possibility of literally downsizing themselves. The International Herald Tribune reported in May last year: “From Chile to Britain and Finland to Malaysia, newspapers once published in the traditional broadsheet size are switching to the smaller tabloid, or compact, layout.”
“Whether this turns out to be anything more than a short-term fix—attracting enough new readers and advertisers to improve the industry’s fortunes—remains unclear,” the report (“Newspapers, on the hunt for readers, think smaller”) said.
It cited an estimate made by Jim Chisholm, a consultant and strategy adviser to the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, that said “more than 40 percent of newspapers worldwide will be tabloids” in 2005, an increase “from around one-third in 1999.”
Price and availability
But for now, it seems that the main goal of Inquirer Compact is to get back former Inquirer readers (who have shifted to other broadsheets or tabloids) as well as those who buy tabloids by producing a smaller version of the broadsheet. According to Ulanday, market studies done by the Inquirer have shown there are two factors affecting consumer decision in buying a paper: availability and price.
Availability refers to the ability of the paper to be seen early enough by the readers when they look for it in the newsstands the next morning. “There were some areas where we were not there as early as we wanted to be and the competition was there earlier,” Ulanday said. Readers ended up buying whatever newspaper was available so that they could get something to read.
Price is another factor. Because of the economic crunch, people who previously bought broadsheets opted to buy tabloids because the latter are cheaper, Ulanday explained.
“We want to be able to lure back ‘lapse readers’ (former Inquirer readers) and possibly attract tabloid readers to read a serious tabloid that has a high-quality brand name like the Inquirer,” he explained.
But why is Inquirer Compact being distributed only in Luzon and featuring stories from that region alone?
Ulanday replied that the newspaper would like to “check out first what happens in Luzon.” In addition, Tumbok and Bandera, both company-owned tabloids in Filipino, are already strong in Visayas and Mindanao. Luzon is therefore another market that can be tapped.
Another concern raised when the management was deciding to publish the Inquirer Compact was that the latter might eat into the market of the Inquirer broad-sheet. But, according to Ulanday, their studies showed that loyal readers of the broadsheet were not likely to shift. This is because such readers still believe that the broadsheet was “more com-plete.” Stories in the compact version are shortened to fit into the limited space, he added.
Andrew Chanco, logistics manager of Inquirer’s circulation department, claimed as much. “Hindi naman kinain iyong sales ng broadsheet because the readers of the Inquirer are still there… they still want to read the broadsheet’s in-depth stories” which cannot simply be accommodated in the compact version because of space, he said.
The hometown press
Feedback from the compe-tition in the provinces has yet to filter through, Ulanday said. “I think they are still on the watch mode,” he explained.
Leonardo Micua, managing editor of the Pangasinan-based Sunday Punch, admitted that many people in their area are buying Inquirer Compact. But he insisted that many people still buy Sunday Punch and that the paper retains a sizeable number of loyal readers.
Established in 1956, the Sunday Punch still does not regard the new kid on the block as a threat, even with regard to advertising.
Cecile Afable, editor of the long-time weekly Baguio Midland Courier, said that it is still too early to say how the Inquirer Compact would affect her newspaper’s share of the market. “It’s too early to tell,” she said, adding that it might take a year before seeing any effect the Inquirer Compact might have in the sales of the Courier.
“Let them come in. It’s a free country,” she said. “We are hap-py with our very small circula-tion (about 15,000 subscribers).”
Sunday Punch publisher Ermin Garcia also said he is not really bothered by the Inquirer Compact. “I’m sure they will have their share of the market,” he said but insisted that the Punch can stand on its own.
He recalled that another large newspaper chain, the Sun.Star, came out with a region-based paper there but, so far, “we’ve managed to stay in our position.”
“I’m not saying this will be forever, but we’re pretty much confident in our position in the market,” Garcia said, adding, “I’ve always felt that the hometown kid has the edge.”
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