Times newspaper gets a new size and a brand new look

Welcome to the new look for the North Thompson Times. After over 30 years as a broadsheet, the newspaper has now adopted a tabloid format.

Actually, the look isn’t new. The Times started out as a tab in 1964. The original owners, Dave Berryman and family, printed it in Clearwater and their press could only accommodate the smaller format.

That continued when Frank and Christena Tonge took over. Frank can still tell horror stories about trying to get the newspaper out in -30 degree weather, with one side of him almost scorching from a red-hot heater and the other side freezing.

That all ended in September of 1977 when the Times started being printed in Kamloops. Instead of a weekly struggle to print the paper, Frank could drop off the cardboard layout sheets, go and have a cup of coffee, come back and the newspaper would be done.

The Kamloops press was set up for a broadsheet newspaper and so the Times became a broadsheet too.

Changing back to a tabloid will have several benefits for our readers, according to Times publisher Al Kirkwood.

The most obvious is that it’s easier to hold and to read than a broadsheet, he said.

More pages will mean there are more opportunities for color photographs and features.

People coming from other communities are accustomed to the tabloid format, said Kirkwood.

For example, nearly all the newspapers in the Interior division of Black Press are tabloids.

As far as the newspaper staff is concerned, having the pages half the size as before will make layout quicker and easier, even though the content and number of column inches remain the same.