Everybody knows that the L.A. Times has been in trouble lately, with shrinking ad sales and dealing with the outbursts of their eccentric billionaire CEO and threatening to suing their staff memo-leakers. But LA Observed reminds us that back in the day, the paper was so big that it killed a dog:

"In Los Angeles media circles the legend is told that in the 1980s, the Los Angeles Times was so fat with news, feature stories and ads that a paper thrown on the porch of actress Barbara Bain landed on—and killed—her dog. (As the Herald Examiner gleefully reported at the time.) That was then. Now the paper is featherweight..."

Nowadays it's only big enough to kill their gnomish CEO Sam Zell, if thrown hard enough. But they're not the only newspaper to shrink: check out the Guardian, downsized in 2005. The old broadsheet version was definitely dog-killing size:


[via Matthew Hunt] And look at tiny little Rolling Stone, the AP points out today. Could it have killed a dog, L.A. Times-style, in its bigger days? Probably not.