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Paragraph five from this article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/13/howard-jacobson-gaza-israel-cruelty-louise-adler

You suspect the western media of propaganda when, in reality, there has been a remarkable lack of representation of life in Gaza since 7 October. I’m not sure where you were last weekend but the epic column inches devoted to the Israeli victims of 7 October does not suggest a failure to give due regard to their suffering.

I don't understand what "epic column inches" mean. I do have two guesses though.

  1. "Epic column" refers to a specific column written last weekend, and its content was "inches", or very much, devoted to the Israeli victims.

  2. "Epic column inches" means many columns were written, and "inches" in this instance is referring to the voluminous columns.

I have never seen the word "inches" placed and used this way, so a explanation would be nice.

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Column inches is an idiom referring to the length of columns of text in a newspaper.

Epic implies that there were a large number of inches (an epic is a long poem or story.)

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    The kids these days may not be aware that newspaper columns were once typically found printed as columns of text on physical pieces of paper.
    – alphabet
    Commented Oct 13 at 16:01
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    @TaliesinMerlin It's not a phrase. It's writing. Why do people so often think that everything has already been written and can be found via google?
    – Lambie
    Commented Oct 13 at 16:40
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    @TaliesinMerlin Google NGram Viewer shows the use "column inches" rose sharply in the 1920s and has been tailing off since. Also see Farlex, particularly used for advertising space.
    – Weather Vane
    Commented Oct 13 at 17:12
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    @Lambie It's a phrase. Why do people think that when I say "phrase" I mean idiom and not noun phrase, which isn't a set expression but can be understood through finding similar instances of use?
    – TaliesinMerlin
    Commented Oct 13 at 22:53
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    @TaliesinMerlin I think the point being made is that "large music book" would be understood as a [large] [music book] without searching if [large music book] was an existing phrase. Similarly [epic] is being used to mean "large or impressive". Like "epic journey", "epic jump", "epic piece of toast"
    – Richard Tingle
    Commented Oct 14 at 9:53

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