Big "Corriere"

Say "tabloid" to Italian-speaking Easterners and they think of the conservative Corriere d'America (circulation, 56,369), a terse, thoroughgoing little Manhattan daily founded in 1922 to print news, not girl and horror pictures.

Last week the Corriere changed its page size from among the smallest to the very largest in the U. S., 18 1/4 x 24 1/4 in., or 1/4 in. wider and 1 3/8 in. longer than standard.

Editor Luigi Barzini explained in an editorial:

1) "Tabloids" have come to be known, not for their handy size but for the low-matter most of them print.

2) Corriere needed more room because of enlarged news service.

3) "To permit . . . offering in the first page the characteristic news of the day."

Not without humor, Editor Barzini described a little-suspected shortcoming of the tabloid-size newspaper. When the Corriere first started, he related, a laborer wrote in from Trenton, N. J., and said: "Your newspaper is beautiful and interesting and I like it very much, but it is too small to wrap my lunch in." Added Editor Barzini: "There was torn from our eyes the veil of the mysteries of certain newspaper circulations."

Editor Barzini's editorial, unlike the rest of Corriere d'America, was printed in English so that all might understand. That did not prevent the non-tabloid, but tabloidesque, New York World from front-paging :

TABLOID ALTERS FORM;

A LUNCH WRAPPER NOW

Editor Says Workingman's Complaint Led to Change in Size.