How Many Pages Today?
How do we decide how many pages should be in the paper each day?
Advertising.
the old rule of thumb for profitable newspapers our size was to run 45-50% advertising. But that was in the day before the full age and double page grocery store ads and the full page department/discount store ads changed to sections printed someplace else and we insert them into the Daily News.
In 2005, the twelve newspapers we confidentially share information with ran 35% advertising. the Daily News ran 40% advertising.
Above is the way we calculate the number of pages for each issue.
There are 126 column inches on a page, a column inch is one column wide by one inche deep. Th estimated number of advertising column inches is divided by 126 to get the number of ad pages and then multiplied by 2. In the above example it indicates 28 pages.
There are other variables that will effect the number of pages. Does news need more for a story, how much color are running, is it full color or a single (spot) color, four sections or two, etc. In a perfect world we would hit our estimate exactly and all the color would fall on the right printing units and that would result in a 50/50 newspaper.
But as you know, Sunday has a lot more ads, and Tuesday a lot fewer. November has a lot more ads and February a lot fewer.
Now you know who to thank if you want more news - our advertisers.