This is what happened to your Monday T-P opinion page

It was "rightsized" into a "Viewpoint".

I think this is my favorite passage from the story Athenae links to.

Michaels is a longtime radio industry executive who used heavy cost cuts to help Zell turn around Jacor Communications. Tribune's papers also include Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant. Another Tribune newspaper, Newsday, is in the process of being sold to Cablevision Systems Corp. for $650 million.

"We always look at the productivity of our sales people, but nobody's ever said, 'How many column inches does a journalist write?'" he said.

He noted the average Tribune journalist in Los Angeles produces about 51 pages of content a year compared to about 300 pages in Hartford or Baltimore, although he acknowledged that investigative and in-depth reporting takes more time.

"When you get into the individuals, you find out that you can eliminate a fair number of people while eliminating not very much content," Michaels said. While other factors have to be taken into account, he said, "we believe that we can save a lot of money and not lose a lot of productivity".

Because we all know the best reporting, or writing for that matter, is that which produces as many words as possible without wasting too much time on research.

In a somewhat related matter, yesterday marked the 47th anniversary of the death of Ernest Hemingway.