Let's get small.

I saw the notice the other day saying that The New York Times was going to get a little smaller, but reading today's paper, the first smaller one, it didn't register until I got to the editorial page. Then: shock! Only 2 columns of letters instead of 3! The editorials look huge and dominating. I've always liked the letters. I read many more letters than editorials.

The editors try to mollify us:

The available space for letters in print has been reduced by about a third.

Online, we present a bigger sampling of letters on subjects of greatest reader interest. And we will run other letters that were selected for publication but for which there was no room in the print version.

... [A]ll letters will be archived and become part of The Times's permanent record.

It feels like the first step toward the seemingly inevitable day when there will be no paper version.

You know I still feel bad about the downsizing of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. What great fashion magazines these were back in the 1970s when they were huge and you could see what was in the photographs. What's the point of getting fabulous models and clothes and lighting and poses for a Newsweek-sized format?

But the effect of shrinking the NYT is almost nothing... until you get to the editorial page. I can't shake the feeling that the editors are encroaching on the letter writers.

Coincidentally, I'm going to cancel my print subscription when I move to Brooklyn. (Soon!) I can't picture "home delivery" when living in an apartment. And if I have to pick it up on the newsstand, will I ever do that? I've gradually been shifting to reading only on line anyway. I used to dive right into the paper ever morning... and then turn to my blog. But over the years of blogging, I've transitioned to going onto the blog first and reading all sorts of things on line before coming around to the paper. Sometimes, now, the paper sits there all day, unopened. Instead of the old eagerness about reading the paper first thing in the morning, I feel the physical object is chiding me. I don't like physical objects chiding me.

Please, NYT, don't take this personally. It's not because you got small. It's not you. It's me.