McSweeney's has posted a preview online of its much anticipated newspaper demonstration project. The San Francisco Panorama, as they're calling it, is going will include a 112-page broadsheet, a 112-page magazine, a 116-page book section, a pocket-sized weekend guide, and three pull-out posters.

The newspaper, which goes on sale in San Francisco and around the country at the beginning of December, is a one-shot deal produced by the McSweeney's crew to demonstrate exactly what can be done in print.

"We think that the best chance for newspapers' survival is to do what the internet can't: namely, use and explore the large-paper format as thoroughly as possible," McSweeney's says on its Web site.

The paper will feature a piece by William Vollmann on gold-mining battles in Imperial County, a story from Afghanistan by J. Macolm Garcia about the recent elections, Jesse Nathan on the effects of unregulated marijuana farms in Mendocino County, as well as the Bay Bridge investigation produced in collaboration with the Public Press and Spot.us.

The 150 writers, artists, and photographers who contributed include both local luminaries and national bold-face names. Among them: Andrew Sean Greer, Nicholson Baker, Roddy Doyle, Art Spiegelman, Michael Chabon, Miranda July, James Franco, Stephen Elliott, Jon Mooallem, Junot Diaz, Peter Orner, and Michelle Tea.

More pix and the background to the project, after the jump.

All images: McSweeneys

Earlier this year, McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers set off a tizzy in media circles when he announced at the annual Authors Guild Dinner in New York that he doesn't believe print is dying.

After telling the audience that anyone who was despairing about the future could email him and he'd tell them why he believed, he was deluged with messages. He replied to all with 1,000-word missive addressed "Dear Person Needing Bucking Up."

In that letter, he announced that McSweeney's was working on the newspaper project:

The hope is that we can demonstrate that if you rework the newspaper model a bit, it can not only survive, but actually thrive.... the best way to ensure the future of journalism is to create a workable model where journalists are paid well for reporting here and abroad. And that starts with paying for the physical paper. And paying for the physical paper begins with creating a physical object that doesn't retreat, but instead luxuriates in the beauties of print.

...if you use the hell out of the medium, if you give investigative journalism space, if you give photojournalists space, if you give graphic artists and cartoonists space—if you really truly give readers an experience that can't be duplicated on the web—then they will spend $1 for a copy. And that $1 per copy, plus the revenue from some (but not all that many) ads, will keep the enterprise afloat.

The San Francisco Panorama is available for preorder. Cost? $16 a pop.