Ever wonder why newspapers have always been so much bigger than any other publication?

Goes back several hundred years. Crude printing presses lacked the ability to print and fold multiple pages, so you made the few pages you could print as big as possible.

Years later when photos arrived, newspaper presses lacked resolution so photos had to be large to compensate.

Thanks to advances in printing technology, those days are past. Newspapers have sophisticated folders and high res printing. But my industry moves at a snail’s pace. We’ve still been printing bigger bulky pages that are hard to handle.

That’s about to change in my newspaper company. This will be the last Sun printed this size. Future editions will employ the Berliner format, which has already been popularized in Europe and many other countries around the world.

I can hear the cluck clucking already. “Times must be tough for newspapers. They’re shrinking the size.” Let me state this clearly: This is not about saving money. There will be no reduction in the number of inches we print. In fact, we will print more inches and double the color pages. This is about giving readers and advertisers what they want and not being stuck in the past.

Numerous surveys have shown that readers prefer a newspaper format that is easier to handle. Advertisers prefer Berliner formats because there are fewer ads per page, so their ads stand out better.

Another reason for the change: The Berliner runs way better on our press. Bear with me and I will elaborate a bit about printing technology.

Our press is 36 inches wide. Right now we are only using 24 of those 36 inches as the standard newspaper width has gradually shrunk over the last 15 years.

I resisted that change. Observant readers may recall that I kept printing in the wide format long after everybody else had shrunk. My publishers thought I was crazy not to change and save some money. My response for 15 years was consistent: “I’ll shrink the size when the standard width gets small enough that I can print four pages per newspaper plate instead of two.”

Now that time has come. The Clarion-Ledger, which is the de facto standard in our state, is now 11 inches wide, slightly smaller than the Berliner. This is important because ad agencies use the Clarion-Ledger sizes when sending ads to other newspapers in the state.

I am pumped up about this. Instead of two pages per newspaper plate, we will be able to get four pages. Now we will be using every inch of the printing press, instead of wasting 30 percent of our width. We will be able to have 16 pages of color per section, which will allow the Sun to be all in color.

In other words, we will be losing five inches off the bottom of our page, but in return we get a whole other 17.5-inch page. Instead of eight color pages per press run, we’ll get 16 pages. It simply makes more sense, especially when surveys show that readers and advertisers prefer the size.

There is an additional benefit from a printing perspective. Under the old format, excess ink built up on the unused outside portion of the press rollers. This created something called ink contamination, when ink of one color creeps into the other color, muddying all the colors.

When you use every inch of the press, the paper effectively serves as a barrier to printing ink contamination. It means a brighter, crisper paper.

The Sun will be the ninth newspaper we have converted to Berliner. I cannot recall one single complaint from an advertiser or reader. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, especially when readers realize that we are actually expanding coverage, not shrinking it.

I personally asked dozens of people about the Berliner format, handing them a sample to see what they would say. I recall sitting with Carolyn Dent, watching our children play in a tennis tournament when I got a typical reaction. She was reading the Sun in broadsheet form when I handed her a Berliner paper. “What do you think?” I asked. Her response was typical: “I love it. I wish all newspapers were this size. It’s so much easier to handle.”

This move is cutting edge in Mississippi, but not elsewhere. Many Colorado and Oregon newspapers are in the Berliner format. It’s a format that’s gaining traction. We hope to use the new page size to be more modern in our layout and typography, giving the Sun more of a magazine feel while still having the frequency advantages of newsprint.

Let us know what you think.