And if you buy it on a Saturday there are still plenty of pullouts, inserts, a magazine, a guide, four or maybe five different sections… though of course during the week it might seem smaller.

Then again, 11 years is a long time in the life of print. The fungible copy might be smaller, but our news output – measured by output on paper and the web, plus of course global reach – has never been bigger.

After all, if you measured Google by the number of things it makes that you can drop on your foot, you’d conclude it was a pretty unimportant company.

I worked in London in 1998. I recall the Guardian as having multiple sections, magazines, inserts, and quite a bit of personal financial information, sports, and in depth stories, particularly on Sunday. Last time I was in London in December 2008, I bought a couple of Guardians and found them less meaty. Ergo, smaller news holes because the amount of text seemed reduced, the number of adverts was down, and the heft of the fungible copy seemed less weighty. In my opinion, a smaller news hole. That’s Kentucky slang for cost cutting. Just my opinion of course.

Stephen Arnold, June 22, 2009