Zora Steiner, of the Berlin State Library, writes on the europeana.eu website ("shar[ing] and promot[ing] European cultural heritage") that the Berliner format first gained popularity in Germany in the early 1900s. But more of that later, because the same blog gives us some interesting information about earlier developments.
"Many historians agree" it reads, "that the world's first newspaper was the German Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien (Account of All Distinguished and Commemorable News)." This was first published in Heidelberg, in 1609, and came in the form of a book – very different from the newspapers we're so familiar with today.
The first broadsheet newspaper is said to be the Dutch Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c., published in 1618. The word 'broadsheet', or 'broadside', refers to both the format and the type of print: a sheet of paper printed on one side and not folded. The broadsheet was introduced in Britain in 1712 when a tax was placed on newspapers based on the number of pages they had. The British people quickly took to the broadsheet for their political activism, as the format lent itself to quick distribution and the printing costs were relatively low. The original broadsheets carried official notices, royal proclamations, public announcements, and (later) ballads and political satire. This contrasts with modern broadsheets, which "typically focus on in–depth coverage with a serious–minded tone".
The word 'tabloid' first appeared in the 1880s, when the London–based pharmaceuticals company Burroughs Wellcome & Co. developed a type of compressed tablet, which they marketed as 'tabloid' pills. The word swiftly caught on, and came to mean anything that was 'compressed' and 'effective'. The first tabloid newspaper was the Daily Mail, launched in 1896, which published news in an easily–understood style, directed toward the working class. The word persisted to describe any newspaper printed on smaller sheets, that published simplified stories in an easily–absorbed style.
It wasn't long after that (in the early 1900s, as we've already seen) that the Berliner format began to appear in Germany. This is slightly larger than a tabloid, but has only three columns – as opposed to the tabloid's (typically) five, and the broadsheets' six. Steiner makes the point that "German has many long words with more syllables than English ... A typical British newspaper column could only contain three to four German words. Almost every line would have to end with a hyphen which would be visually unappealing." Not only that, but "The ornate German Fraktur font is wider than the commonly used Antiqua. This meant more space would be needed to avoid the letters from being crowded and becoming illegible."
Although no major UK newspaper is printed in the Berliner format today, Wikipedia lists more than a dozen on the continent, and in the Americas – including several very well–known titles – that are. Steiner concludes with the thought that "The format of a newspaper is no longer as strongly linked to its content as it was in the past. However, our perception of the quality of a newspaper is still strongly influenced by its design."
© Haydn Thompson 2022