Wanganui Chronicle itself, even while retaining its broadsheet size, has seen many changes in its 155-year history.
Once upon a time, every page was divided into six columns and the front page was devoted to classified advertising and business directories. Imagine the outcry when news graduated to the front and classifieds made slow progress through the paper to their current position near the back! And what happened when they started to print photographs? No doubt there were those who saw it as the beginning of the end, the top of the slippery slope into pictorial magazine hell.
Then there was colour! The scandal of it all! Pictures of people in (gasp!) real flesh tones. Some must have considered it highly indecent and the newspaper photographers were - obviously - purveyors of paper pornography. And then to use colour for text backgrounds and sidebars, and even headlines, well that was obviously improper and just playing with technology for the sake of it.
Imagine a newspaper, in 2012, in black and white only. Or, take away the photographs. Reverting to old formats would be seen as badly advised change and there would be consequences initiated by readers and advertisers alike.
Change is a necessary thing in the life of anything and a daily newspaper has to be sensitive to the changing needs of the readership and the marketplace. It will still be Wanganui Chronicle and our citizens will still make the same (unfounded) complaints about its intent and content. But it's where you'll read the local news - good or bad - and catch up on the notices of importance. Of course there are on-line sources of similar information, and Wanganui Chronicle in fact, provides one of those.
Remember Wanganui Herald? It was the local evening daily paper, established in 1867 by leading citizens John Ballance and AD Willis. A mere 120 years later, in response to changing fortunes, it quietly morphed into Wanganui Midweek.
There's no danger of Wanganui Chronicle becoming less than daily, not with its on-line commitment and subscriber loyalty, but how many people look at Midweek and proclaim it a load of rubbish and nothing like the good old Wanganui Herald? I accept there'll be a few smart answers to that question, so we'll move on.
The word tabloid has unfortunate connotations, thanks to Fleet Street and papers such as the Sun with its titillating, sensationalist "news" and page 3 girls. Such an example, along with News of the World, and others, have tainted the word and given us the phrase "tabloid journalism". It's unfair, of course, because tabloid is purely an indication of size, not (necessarily) of content. It's to differentiate it from the other word - broadsheet. Wanganui's daily is changing page size and will continue to serve up its regular doses of local, national and world news with no more than a glance at the lives of celebrities. The Chron reporters and photographer(s) are not going to don the paparazzi hats and go chasing slander and salacious gossip, any more than they would have under a broadsheet format. And the Chronicle is as likely to publish pictures of a page 3 girl as it is to put the death notices to music.
It will always have its critics, as any newspaper should, but the format change is no reason to see the Chronicle as anything less than it has been for 155 years.
And Midweek will continue to be there as its weekly side road into stories about Wanganui people and the wonderful things they do. Together, we will cover as much as is humanly possible, as we have always done, serving slightly different demographics but the same overall amazing community that is Wanganui.
But what will they use to wrap our fish and chips?
