Observatorio (OBS* ) Journal, vol.7 - nº 4 (2013), 001-021 1646-5954/ERC123483/2013 001 From Broadsheet to Tabloid: Content changes in Swedish newspapers in the light of a shrunken size Ulrika Andersson* * University of Gothenburg, Sweden Abstract During the early 2000s, the newspaper market in Northern Europe was characterised by a trend of format changes as many broadsheets have chosen to adapt to the tabloid format. Similar tendencies also have emerged in other Western countries, making it a transnational phenomenon. Critics have argued that a reduced size impacts the content, resulting in increased tabloidisation, finding a connection between the page size and the news content whereby the broadsheet and tabloid formats require different kinds of journalism. Thus, this study aims to analyse whether it is possible to detect this type of increased tabloidisation in relation to the resizing of newspapers. Using the theoretical concept of tabloidisation, this study begins with a content analysis of Swedish dailies that have changed their format during the early 2000s. Comparisons are made to newspapers that did not undergo this type of transition as means of determining whether any of the changes detected can be explained by the actual format change, or rather, are the effects of other factors. The study focuses on news content published in 1990, 2000, and 2010. It reveals that the format itself has had only a minor influence on journalism, in that all newspapers show similar signs of increased tabloidisation during this period. Keywords: broadsheets, journalism, tabloids, tabloid transition, tabloidisation I ntroduction “The tabloid has conquered the newspaper business” ( SvD, 2004). Those were the words of the Swedish quality paper Svenska Dagbladet ( SvD) in early October 2004. The article was written due to the transition of several large morning papers from the broadsheet to the tabloid format. During two weeks in October, more than 800,000 Swedish readers and subscribers found their local newspaper to have shrunk to about half of its original size in one day. A common argument used to justify the resizing of daily newspapers was that the tabloid format represented a modern and reader-friendly product (Melesko, 2006; Newsbound, 2010; Sternvik, 2007a, 2007b). The tabloid format, however, was not a new phenomenon in the industry. The actual breaking point during which the vast majority of all Swedish dailies were printed in tabloid size took place as early as the mid-1980s, due to the choice of many smaller newspapers to adopt the tabloid format. But, it was not until the 2000s that the tabloid became the common standard in the industry due to the decision of a great number of large newspapers to adopt the compact format (Sternvik, 2007a, 2007b). Copyright © 2013 (Ulrika Andersson). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://obs.obercom.pt.