VF Daily is reporting that the New York Times has gotten skinnier by trimming the fat, so to speak. When VF randomly took a ruler to the Times pages they discovered that a decade ago there were 5,549 inches set aside for ad space and 2,188 square inches of news. Currently there are 2,524 square inches of column space devoted to news, and 3,359 inches of ad space. Puts a whole new spin on shrinkage factor.

All of which is awesome, if say you actually buy the paper (and we know people do because we often see them on the subway with it). For the rest of us who find news stories that don't include hyper-links strangely suspect, we think it would be awesome if the Times also shrunk those full page ads that tend to pop up between the lede and the full story, the ones (often for places like Ralph Lauren, it seems) that include that tiny link that will let you "skip this ad" in the corner. Just one of those instances where smaller and shorter are definitely better.