The News & Observer got skinnier last week. The newspaper removed the movie summaries from the Channels TV book on Sunday, reducing its size by 10 pages.

Some of you noticed. "I hate that," said Bobbie Campbell. "My daughter noticed it. too. It's just a handy little thing to have." The N&O got about two dozen complaints -- not a huge number out of a Sunday circulation of more than 200,000.

The slimming down of Channels is the latest in a series of space reductions in The News & Observer over the past couple of years. They're designed to reduce expense in a time of continuing revenue pressures in the newspaper business. (The paper also has reduced staffing through attrition, but that's another column.)

The biggest reduction has been the elimination last year of daily and Sunday stock listings, which cut out 14 pages a week. The Sports section has been shaved by about six pages a week. And next month, The N&O will cut two more pages from the Sunday paper by combining two sections -- Arts & Entertainment and Sunday Journal -- into a new Arts & Living section.

As it has taken away, the paper has tried to add back. In Channels, the popular TV crossword puzzle was restored to the section. Arts & Living will add food, fashion and health features, plus a new puzzle and humor columnist. But the bottom line is less content in the print paper, and that should be a concern for the reader.

It's "The Incredible Shrinking Newspaper," and The N&O isn't alone in finding itself in this bad movie. I checked last week with fellow ombudsmen at other papers, and all reported similar or worse losses in news space. The Baltimore Sun cut its book pages from two to one, eliminated the Saturday op-ed page and cut the TV book. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reduced its religion and home and garden sections, as well as its TV listings. The Arizona Daily Star cut out a Monday business section. The Hartford Courant eliminated its staff-produced Sunday magazine. The Charleston Post and Courier cut its Sunday business section.

At some point, shrinking the product makes the paper less valuable to readers, and that ultimately can hurt readership, circulation and advertising --which could lead to further cuts.

It's a downward spiral, says Phil Meyer, journalism professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and author of "The Vanishing Newspaper." Too many newspaper owners, he said, are taking the short-term view of cutting expenses to preserve dwindling profit margins, rather than investing for the future to address the public's shifting media consumption habits.

"By entering this downward spiral, you're not solving the problem, you're just stretching it out," he said. "Stretching it out as long as possible makes sense to current owners and management, while passing the problem on to future owners. But that's not good for society, because someone has to worry about the social-service function of newspapers."

Meyer says newspapers remain a mass-market medium in a niche-market communications world, where the Internet and specialized media are carving target audiences out of the hide of newspapers.

Given the economics, the shrinking of newspapers is inevitable, he says. But Meyer says good papers are taking the savings from cutting the traditional paper and re-investing in new products designed to reach audiences different from the older demographic that reads newspapers.

Newspaper publisher Hearst Corp., for instance, is experimenting with an electronic newspaper -- a tabloid-size flexible screen -- that could constantly receive news updates via Wi-Fi technology. Most newspapers are investing in online products targeted to younger readers and niche markets and the advertisers who want to reach them. The N&O recently revamped its news site, newsobserver.com, and its triangle.com entertainment and shopping Web site.

Orage Quarles III, The N&O's publisher, says the paper's focus increasingly is online, while still trying to protect the core news product. The space reductions have come in peripheral areas like TV and stock listings, while pages dedicated to main news and local news have been preserved. "We're doing all we can to protect the core product and build online," he said.

Quarles noted that the paper is adding other products about fashion, cooking and home design. However, those sections are produced by the advertising department, not the newsroom.

For next year, The N&O actually has budgeted to increase news space for coverage of elections and the Olympics. Still, the total amount of space in 2008 is projected to decline from 2007, because of the reductions in TV listings and the Sunday sections.

I asked Quarles if there is a line beyond which the paper would begin to cannibalize itself and lose readers.

"There is a line," he said. "I think we're close to that line, but we're not crossing it."

I hope the paper can hold the line. Cutting space is not a long-term strategy for serving readers.

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