Would You like News with That? Compacting Brisbane's Courier-Mail

Abstract

In 2006 Queensland's Courier-Mail was relaunched in a ‘compact’ format. This study compares one week of the broadsheet format of The Courier-Mail (the third week of September 2005) with the corresponding week from the new compact format a year later. The study demonstrates that the new format of the newspaper was not merely an aesthetic change: increased advertising and a more regular use of pullouts were accompanied by often-significant changes in editorial content. Refining Sparks' model of print media fields (2000: 14–15), the authors demonstrate how this change in positioning of the newspaper might be mapped against other print media and suggest that this model might also have wider application in understanding a media landscape experiencing legislative and technological change.