The Daily News (formerly Palo Alto Daily News) today switched to a smaller page size to save money.
The free newspaper reduced its height from 16 inches to 11.25 inches. It’s also slightly wider, going from 10.75 inches to 11.375 inches. The switch reduces the image area on a page by about 25 percent.
With the move, the paper replaced its nameplate, which used to stretch across the front page. Now it fills the space of a square, and it uses the same light san serif font that its sister publication, the Mercury News, uses for some of its headlines.
A note on the front said:
- We hope you’ll enjoy our redesigned Daily News tabloid format. Our new look is designed to showcase one or two top Peninsula stories of the day on the cover and give you a road map of teasers to the best local news, sports, entertainment and business stories inside.
Our size has changed because we are now rolling off the presses of our sister newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, a move that saves us money in these hard economic times and thus positions us to continue giving you the best local news coverage well into the future. The change also brands our newspaper as different than the local competition, and makes it easier for our on-the-go readers to carry around.
You’ll find all our familiar sections and offerings inside.
Our advertisers will also gain as their messages will stand out more than before in a wider column size with greater page dominance. The change in size, along with an in creased distribution in our core cities, makes the Daily News an even more effective marketing product.
The move comes a month after the MediaNews Group paper closed its Burlingame Daily News, San Mateo Daily News and Redwood City Daily News. At that time, it also dropped the words “Palo Alto” from its name. It moved from Palo Alto to Menlo Park a year earlier. [Note: The Press Club Web page is edited by Dave Price, who was a co-founder of the Daily News in 1995, sold it in 2005 and now publishes the rival Daily Post.]
UPDATE, 11 A.M. May 6: The Daily News has two nameplates. The second (above right) one was used today, and it’s more horizontal but still in red.