Is the Guardian about to outsource printing and go tabloid?

Newspaper publishing presses are very much like commercial aircraft, they cost millions to build and lose money when not “in flight”. For newspapers like The Guardian who have seen their print sales plummet in recent years, it’s a big problem.

According to media reports, the fall in circulation compounded with the decline in the number of pages carrying advertising has resulted in The Guardian’s press operating at far less than optimal capacity. This may lead to The Guardian outsourcing its print operations to another publisher such as News UK.

The Guardian currently operates two Berliner-size printing presses at The Guardian Press Centre which opened in 2005 following an investment believed to be in the region of £80 million. However, as very few UK newspapers use the Berliner format, contract printing is a difficult sell to fill capacity. Aside from printing The Guardian and The Observer, The Guardian Press Centre also prints The New European.

So would moving presses mean The Guardian would have to adopt a more “standard” format and join the majority of the British press as a tabloid? Newspaper insiders suggest that the topic has been in discussion since 2011.

And herein lays one of the biggest problems the newspaper industry faces today – indecision.

It was indecision about the widespread adoption of the web as an advertising platform back in the late 1990s that opened the door to competition from property, motors and recruitment sites taking the lion’s share of classified advertising revenues from newspapers. And indecision has guide virtually every commercial and editorial decision in the newspaper industry ever since. It seems to me as if newspaper executives are more interested in protecting the image of their glorious past rather than investing in the future.

So should The Guardian outsource their printing and go tabloid? I would argue – yes. But I would also argue following The Independent’s route and going 100% digital because that’s surely just a matter of time.

I’ll leave the last words to a spokesperson from The Guardian who told journalists: “We don’t comment on rumour or speculation.”