Rethinking printer friendly format

Most news sites now carry a little “control panel” along with each of their articles that lets viewers e-mail, tag, or otherwise manipulate the page. One of the more common buttons is the “print” button—you know, the one that takes all the ads off the page?

Ahhh.

Why does “printer friendly format” mean a plain page with, at most, a “printer format sponsored by” image at the top of the page?

Newspapers have spent years specializing in making things look nice on paper. Why not offer articles for print in a format that looks nice on a printed page AND provides space for advertisements? It’s not like it can’t be done - look at any magazine that approximates an 8×10 printed page.

If you want to be nice, display only grayscale ads, so that you won’t waste people’s color ink.

But I see no reason why “printer-friendly” need to mean “revenue-free.” It just needs to mean: “optimized for reading on paper.”