Thursday left me floored. The first thing I saw wasn't the story about Zell and COO Randy Michaels' proposal to increase the ratio of advertising in the Tribune Co. papers by 25 percent, or the notion that a writer's worth can be measured by the column inches produced, it was this story from Mark Harrington for Newsday: "Newsday Drops Some Delivery Agents."

The bigger story about changing the ad/editorial ratio and measuring worth in column inches… well have you ever seen the anvil falling on Wiley Coyote's head? Pow, Pow, Pow… into a hole in the ground.

The story is that the delivery agents of Newsday had to rebid to Newsday for their delivery contracts, with an emphasis on reducing costs. This is happening in an environment of rising gas prices and tougher immigration efforts.

That newspaper you're reading, assuming you still read a newspaper, it wasn't delivered by a vehicle getting 40 miles per gallon. Most likely it was a woman or a minority (probably an illegal immigrant) who threw it from the front seat of a beater. And Newsday is trying to save money. It is squeezing people who are essential to delivering the product and don't have anything left to give.

Undoubtedly, we'll see the same thing happen in this market. But this market doesn't have a Mark Harrington watching over the newspaper carriers. Harrington is watching them because of a circulation scandal involving Newsday, which he covered.

"In a statement, Newsday circulation vice president Paul Barbetta said: "To maintain the best service for our customers and optimal business efficiency, we routinely evaluate contracts and processes across the company," Harrington wrote. As related in the article, some of these agents were associated with Newsday for more than a decade.

This may have already started in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune, which recently swallowed the delivery operations of the Sun-Times Media Group, forecast it would make several million dollars delivering the opposition's newspaper. It would make sense for the Chicago Tribune to follow the lead of Newsday. If it was successful in Long Island, why not in Blue Island too?