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The New York Times to Change To a 6‐Column Format Sept.

The New York Times to Change To a 6‐Column Format Sept.
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June 15, 1976, Page 33Buy Reprints
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The New York Times will take on a new appearance next September by changing its format of eight columns on a page to one of six columns for news and nine columns for display advertisements, the newspaper's publisher. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, announced yesterday.

The changes will make the news columns wider and display advertising columns narrower, but page sizes and type faces will remain the same. Classified advertisements, now printed 10 columns to a page will be unchanged.

The column changes will go into effect on Sept. 7 and will apply to all weekday and Sunday pages except those of The New York Times Magazine and The New York Times Book Review. Several Sunday sections already use the six‐column format for news.

“The reasons for the change are to give the reader a more open, easier‐to‐read format and to conserve newsprint in order to lower costs and minimize future advertising‐rate increases,” Mr. Sulzberger said in making the announcement.

“These changes will not affect content or the quality of our product. Our comprehensive news and feature coverage and our broad range of display and classified advertising will remain the same.”

A Saving of Newsprint

Mr. Sulzberger noted that the changes were similar to those instituted by many other newspapers in the country and were consistent with efforts by the newspaper industry to standardize formats as a convenience to advertisers.

The six‐column measure for news will be a return to the original format used by The Times in its debut on Sept. 18, 1851. That format remained in use until a seven‐column measure was introduced on Dec. 4, 1865. The current eight‐column configuration was adopted on April 1, 1913.

The new format will permit The Times to reduce the size of an 88‐page paper to 84 pages without any reduction in content. This and other changes made last year will result in a saving of newsprint—the paper that newspapers are printed on —of about 5 percent a year, Mr. Sulzberger said.

Newsprint costs, now at $285 a ton have risen by more than 50 percent since late 1973. Last year. The Times used 265,000 tons.

Wider News Columns

Under the planned changes, the current printed column width of 1¾ inches will be reduced to 1½ inches for display advertisements and increased to 2¼ inches for news.

Advertising space is measured in lines, and the number of lines of advertising for each page will be increased to 2,700 from 2,400. The advertising rates per line, however, will remain the same.

In making these changes, The Times joins a number of other newspapers that have sought similar solutions to higher production and materials costs. Newspapers in Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Houston, Memphis, Washington, Pittsburgh, Denver and Phoenix have adopted or are planning to adopt the so‐called six‐on‐nine column measure.

The nine‐column format for display ads is one of several standard dimensions recommended by the format committee of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. Standard dimensions facilitate the placing of advertisements in a number of newspapers simultaneously, as in national campaigns.

Despite the column changes, the width of a Times page will remain 14½ inches. Page and column widths have been periodically reduced over the years in response to rising newsprint costs.

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