The incredible shrinking Free Press

I don't mean to rag on local papers too much here, but has anyone noticed the recent size reduction of the Mankato Free Press? Obviously it's not the Free Press' fault -- probably not even the publisher has much say in the issue -- but it's still worth noting. The paper is now about 3/4 of an inch narrower than it was before, and it was already fairly narrow.

Here's what I'm guessing folks at the Free Press do have control over: the amount of white space between the columns of text (there's actually a name for that, which I'm forgetting at the moment). And someone somewhere decided the Free Press would reduce the space between the columns of text. The result is a horrible-looking mess where columns of text run up against and into each other because there isn't enough white space between them. I don't understand why someone, after the first day following the change, didn't open up the paper and immediately say: "This has to be changed back."

I might scan in a copy of a Free Press article to illustrate what I mean. Reading articles in the paper is almost impossible now -- that's how bad it is.