The Post shrinks in size

It was announced in one of the The Post's daily budget meetings that the paper size will be losing 10 column inches from each of its pages. This decision was made for The Post staff by The Athens Messenger who prints both papers. Although it's unclear why the Messenger is changing the size of the paper, the best educated guess is it's a result of the financial slump and decreased ad revenue.

I've been hearing a lot about the state of print media since my first year at Scripps. Newsrooms are downsizing, subscriptions are decreasing, ad sales have dropped, etc. Add this with the current state of the economy and it's no wonder little Athens is finally being affected. One woman in The Post's meeting was surprised this could be happening-- The Post? Shrink? "Why don't we just sell more ads?" she asked (and to her defense, I first wondered the same thing). But it's not that simple in a market that doesn't want to buy.

The Post isn't the first to shrink. The Washington Post, USA Today and L.A. Times reduced their size to save cost on paper. In 2007, the Wall St. Journal changed from 15" to 12" and plans to save about $18 million a year.

Personally it's a little strange to write about papers shrinking. One, because I'm writing about it on an Internet blog (killing them softly?) and two, because the earliest memories of news comes from my parents in the mornings with a paper. As an online major I believe in the Internet, but the pace by which it's changing the past frightens me. We need a new term for revolutionary.