The San Francisco Chronicle, with circulation falling faster than any other major U.S. newspaper’s, will become the first general-interest daily to print its editions on high-quality glossy paper on Monday, the Associated Press reports.
The Chronicle will use glossy paper on the front page, on most other section fronts and on some inside pages. On Sundays, the main news sections and several other sections will be glossy, the San Francisco Business Times says.
The move is primarily an appeal to advertisers who like how much better their ads reproduce on glossy paper in comparison to newsprint. That appeal is partly behind the birth of so many local and regional magazines in the several years before the bottom fell out of the economy and print media.
The downside is that glossy paper is more expensive, but the Chronicle “confirmed it has secured some advertising commitments for the new glossy format, [though] it would not provide details or discuss the paper’s costs,” the AP says.
Mark Adkins, the Chronicle’s president, told the Business Times that “the move ‘is a consumer play as well as an advertising play,’ responding to demands on both fronts for better quality reproduction. Without naming names, Adkins said that some advertisers who are now playing ball with the Chronicle wouldn’t before. They shunned newspaper ads because ‘they don’t deliver the brand image they require,’ he said — an obstacle the Chronicle’s new paper removes.”
“The paper’s executives have been quoted in many venues lately as saying the Chronicle now makes a profit some weeks, others not … (but) Adkins told the Business Times that the Chronicle expects to make a profit every week in November and December” with the addition of glossy pages.
“The Chronicle is sprucing up just as two of the nation’s three largest newspapers are aggressively courting the San Francisco Bay area’s affluent residents and high-end advertisers,” the AP says. “The New York Times introduced a special Bay area edition last month and The Wall Street Journal is launching one on Thursday.” (See our previous post.)