European broadsheets shrinking? Heavens!

The Wall Street Journal has picked up on a trend that's been gathering speed in Europe for more than a year: The shift in format among quality papers from big awkward broadsheet to handy tabloid. This is a bit of a paradigm shift, since news staff and readers alike have for generations associated broadsheet with quality, and tabloid with sleaze. As the WSJ notes:

The shift is about much more than simply cutting the size of the pages. Europe's broadsheets have been fighting for readers with traditional tabloids that offer more titillating fare, especially those in the U.K. For newspapers like the Times of London and Belgium's Gazet van Antwerpen, going tabloid means conceding that large-page newspapers may become relics of a bygone era -- even as they insist they can maintain higher standards of journalism.

We'll see whether "quality" is maintained. What seems to be more important for newspapers such as The Times and The Independent is that they've seen their circulation steadily increase (or, as in the case of Gazet von Antwerpen, stabilize). What's more, the circulation gains, at least in Britain, come at a time when the "traditional" tabs, such as the Sun and especially the Mirror, are seeing steep declines in readership. Maybe some readers are switching over. (Question: Will these new readers expect values and practices from their new brand of paper that are more "tab" than "quality"?) In any case, readers seem to like the change. The WSJ also points to other "serious" European broadsheets that have turned into tabloids this year, including Information in Denmark, Dagens Nyheter in Sweden and De Standaard in Belgium.

I wonder how long it takes the Wall Street Journal to follow suit.