Sunday, September 30, 2012

The Hippo takes a little off the top

I don't know if anyone else noticed this but recently, The Hippo took a little off the top. The weekly newspaper based out of Manchester that covers arts, politics, sports, and news from around the Granite State slimmed down its size significantly sometime in the past couple of months.
(I wish I had an older version to show the side by side because it's significant).
The change was probably made to save a bit of money on printing costs. Or, it might have been done to adhere to another press run from the outsourcing company (in the past, The Hippo was published by the Concord Monitor parent company; I don't know if that is still true or not ... the new size is, however, more in line with the Monitor's Insider publication).
That being said, two positives came of the chopped off top: There are more color pages inside the publication, which is nice, and there are more pages inside now too. This edition was almost 90 pages in length (In 2007, The Hippo was often as high as 70 pages with the larger format; in 2009, it had dropped down to 56 pages).
Previous editions of The Hippo, especially after the economic crash, physically showed the drop in print advertising which was a sign of the times back then, hence the smaller editions. The change in formatting makes for a more breezy read while still offering all the things the previous editions of The Hippo offered.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Remember this iconic graphic?

I'm waiting for the Barack Obama version.
Oh, there isn't one yet? No, there isn't. Hmm. Soldiers are still dying over there, right? Yup. So, where is the montage? Where is the artistry? Where is the outrage? Yup, I know, not there now. Sigh.