HOW THIN CAN YOU GET

Had the good fortune of attending the Publishers Lunch Club where Gail Collins offered some interesting thoughts about that grey old lady, the Times. I told her we all want to get thinner but few succeed but an exception was The New York Times which seemed to be getting thinner every day. Gail said that was actually a good thing because readers were often overwhelmed by an overweight, ovrsized newspaper, and that they like the thinner version. I said my real question was how long did she think the Times would last. Her response was a cheery one. While papers like the Enquirer in Philadelphia and the Globe in Boston are endagered species, she predicted eventually there would be four national newspapers and one was the Times, which is a good and often the only reason to get up in the morning.