The New York Times, which for six days a week had been the newspaper equivalent of a black-and-white TV set, finally broke the daily color barrier Monday with a blue Cadillac and a full-color photo of the late, legendary soprano Maria Callas.
That is no big deal to the vast majority of readers of major metropolitan newspapers, which have offered color front pages and section fronts for years.
But the transition of the Times to the land beyond multiple shades of gray underscores the importance of color in a medium that has been losing advertising market share to television–which embraced color technology three decades ago.
“The world is in color, and you’re almost an aberration if you don’t have it,” said Dave Gray, executive director of the Society of Newspaper Design. “It’s almost like owning a car. It’s what you have to do to live today.”
The Times, which has a daily circulation of about 1.1 million, already had color in several sections of its Sunday editions. The expansion into daily color is the product of a new $350 million printing plant in Queens, and a recognition that advertisers want color to sell their products.
The Times’ move is part of a bright new flurry in New York. The Daily News started using color photos on the first and last two pages of its weekday editions last week. The New York Post introduced a color TV section a week ago. And Long Island-based Newsday, which has published in color since 1986, introduced color comics on Monday.
Studies have shown that newspaper readers are almost instinctively attracted to color. To advertisers, color is the Holy Grail.
“Advertisers have become accustomed to high-quality colors on television and magazines,” said newspaper analyst John Morton, who called the Times’ investment a “strategic move” that will generate more advertising income for the paper.
“There’s an awful lot of investment you have to make as a newspaper just to maintain the current level of business. One of the goals is to make sure that circulation doesn’t go down,” Morton said.
Declining circulation at dailies has been the trend for decades, hastened by the pervasive nature of television and the encroachments from other sources of information. The Times has lost about 125,000 readers in the past four years, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
By itself, though, circulation is an often misleading indicator; attracting the readers who will respond to advertising is the ultimate goal. And, by itself, color will not generate circulation gains. Years of losses at most major dailies, including the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times, prove that.
Although the Times attracts many of the most economically desirable readers, the subtle move to color, some analysts say, is an attempt to reach out to a new generation of reader accustomed to color TV and multicolored publications.
The most loyal newspaper readers are over 40 years old, and one of the industry’s biggest concerns is grooming a new generation from a group that for the most part did not grow up with the newspaper reading habit. That is why many newspapers have tried to make themselves more visually appealing.
“USA Today defined the use of color in newspapers, and they totally changed the environment in the use of graphics. That is what the younger readers have come to expect. If the Times uses it well, it should have a positive impact on younger readership,” said Miles Groves, chief economist at the Newspaper Association of America, the newspaper industry’s chief trade group.
“Will a full-page color ad in the entertainment section make a difference for me? Probably not,” said Groves. “But will it make a difference for my daughter? It might.”
But color, as John Lavine, director of Northwestern University’s Newspaper Management Center, noted, will not be the savior.
“The mistake is to look at color as an isolated event,” Lavine said. Indeed, the Times’ embrace of color is part a series of improvements and new features, including later deadlines for news and sports results, as well as new and expanded sections.
Color is a “big part” of the newspaper competition, Lavine said, “and if you don’t do it, you can’t play.”
