Next Monday, Managing Editor Peggy Bellows recently informed Times-Dispatch readers, the newspaper will "be a little different." As in smaller. 

The newspaper will fold its Metro coverage and Prime Living page into the A section, along with the traditional national news, international news and the editorial pages. Also, a new "Fun & Games" section will combine comics, puzzles, TV listings and Back Page features into a "spadia" (a half page in front and full page in back) that wraps around the sports section, every day but Sunday.

The downsizing is the inevitable result of declining print advertising revenues and brutal pressure from Wall Street on parent company Media General to maintain profit margins. Not only is the T-D cutting its editorial hole, it continues to hemorrhage editorial talent. A recent example is award-winning journalist and author Chip Jones, who has joined Richmond advertising firm The Bergman Group to launch Richmondleaders.com, a digital publication that aims to "promote civil discussion about issues that relate to leadership in the Richmond, Virginia region."

The T-D has loads of company in its misery. Every other newspaper in the country is facing the challenge of evaporating classified advertising sales, pallid space ad sales, and increasing competition for readers and advertisers both from digital publications like Richmond.com and global giants like Google, Yahoo and AOL, whose readership and advertising reach extends into local markets.

I don't envy the job of T-D Publisher Tom Silvestri. It's no fun presiding over a disintegrating enterprise. But newspapers, like the steel mills of the '70s and '80s, have a long way to slide before they find a new equilibrium.