"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...

I can say that since 9-11, the page count on the various magazines that I
write for has been reduced substantially in order to cut costs, because
advertising revenue is down and newsstand sales are down. Everybody is
trying to find some way to shave a dime and folks are accepting some
advertising that they might not otherwise have taken.

According to editors at both of the magazines I write for, a lot of the
advertisers have decided to put more of their advertising dollars into
websites rather than magazines, seeing more immediate paybacks.

As Scott says, this means page counts are down, so the news hole is smaller.
If the news hole is smaller, there are two ways an editor can deal with
that. One is to keep articles the same length, but buy fewer of them. The
other is to buy the same number of articles, but make them shorter (and
usually shallower as a result). Most editors will choose the latter course,
because they want to maintain the variety of articles -- a magazine with 8
features in it will stand a better chance of appealing to a newsstand buyer
than one with 4 features, because there's twice the possibility of finding a
topic that appeals to a particular reader. Whether the shorter article
satisfies the buyer is, of course, a whole 'nother question.

Peace,
Paul