"Honey, They Shrank the Newspaper!"

A chill went through me this morning when the oil company called, telling me that if I wanted a heating oil delivery today it would cost me an extra $100, since it was Saturday. These are the same people who I made famous when I signed a ‘budget plan’ and ended up paying $4.20 a gallon all year when the average price of oil was about $2.65.

But no, they wouldn’t come out, and so I did a ‘number 8’ as the Kiwis would say. I drove down to Wal-Mart and bought a 5 gallon jerry can. Then I poured the soapy fuel into my oil tank, and prayed it would last until Monday.

While I was at the gas station, I saw a box with the local daily newspaper inside. “Honey, they shrank the paper,” I thought, noticing that this broadsheet paper has now become a tiny little tabloid like the Boston Herald. A woman in Cumbies told me that they only shrunk Saturday and Monday’s papers, and the rest of the week they print the full broadsheet size.

I know that they have big money problems at most papers, but this is a dramatic shift. Printing it sideways and turning the Republican into a part-time tab means far less column inches to sell ads in. But then again, they’ll use half as much paper.