LAT Drops Most Stock Tables, And So Will NYT

In another retreat for newspapers, the L.A. Times has dropped all but one page of stock tables each day, and the New York Times says it will drop all but two pages as of April 4.

This is designed to save news space, and both papers say their readers can find the stock quotations on the Internet anyway.

But then why not drop newspapers? After all, you can find anything on the Internet.

I will be frank about this: I did read the stock tables in the papers, but I don't read them on the Internet. In short, this is an inconvenience.

Newspaper editors are constricting their mission. It may not be long now, before they abbreviate movie listings, truncate headlines and reduce box scores for games. Not to mention dropping the weather page.

They are giving up, and shortchanging their readers. despite what they say, and they are still, generally, making money.

How about a compromise? The L.A. Times will print every day, on Page 1, Tribune CEO Dennis FitzSimon's salary, which has been going up, as the readability of its newspapers has been going down.

Also, once a week, FitzSimons will appear in Los Angeles standing in a barrel of water, and readers can come down and throw fruit at him. But I'll bet as long as he rakes in his millions, he will still be smiling.

It is sad, folks, to see these magnates give up so easily. Times, they are changing, and not for the better.

But maybe for the weather page, they can substitute a box allowing readers to guess the weather. Those who are right don't have to read the paper at all.