The Shrinking Media

I've been spending a lot of time in my parent's garage trying to get rid of stuff that's no longer needed. My dad was a saver and filer of just about anything he thought might be needed or wanted someday, so there has been a lot of stuff to go through. So far I've filled five large 45 gallon lawn and garden bags just with stuff from the shredder. That doesn't count about 4 or 5 other bags of stuff that didn't need shredding.

While going through an old box today I came across the front section of the Orange County Register from April, 1983. I thought it would be fun to compare the newsprint size to today's paper, so I lined up the right sides and here you go:

The paper is as tall as it used to be, but has lost at least two inches in width. Some days it's barely larger than the Weekly Reader I got in elementary school.

I heard the other day that newspaper advertising was down 27% last year and you can sure see how it has hit the local media.