“Most print newspapers will be gone in five years,” says a new report from the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. The forecast by center director Jeffrey I. Cole, based on 10 years of studies, says, “America is at a major digital turning point … We believe that the only print newspapers that will survive will be at the extremes of the medium — the largest and the smallest.” The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal will likely survive, along with some local weeklies, Cole writes/Jeff Sonderman, L.A. Weekly. More here. (AP file photo for illustrative purposes: Final edition of the King County Journal rolls off the presses just after midnight in Kent, Wash. Sunday, Jan. 21, 2007)

Question: Are you among those who believe digital media will almost completely supplant print media in five to 10 years? How will that affect your life, if it comes to pass?

A correspondent (who asked to remain anonymous) pulled together some comparisons of daily newspaper page size, on occasion of the Boise Idaho Statesman’s switch today to publication on the press of the Nampa Idaho Press-Tribune - which is cutting the page size. But it has been cut before, and it has been a process. A big process it has been, too. In 1986, space on a page of the broadsheet Statesman covered 323.1 square inches. As of today, a page is 233.7 square inches. And we should note here that the Statesman is far from alone in the trimming; few if any daily newspapers publish today in the dimensions they did 20 years ago/Randy Stapilus, Ridenbaugh Press. More here.

Question: How much are you bothered when a newspaper literally shrinks in size?