The way to save newspapers isn’t by offering less coverage.

The latest example is sports agate, eliminated this time from The Hartford Courant in response to budget cuts. As you know, fans love agate. Isn’t “fan” the root of fanatic? Cutting agate makes reading the newspaper a lot less useful, fun and necessary for them.

In a column by the reader representative, the sports editor says it was a choice between bad and worse:

Jeff Otterbein explained to those who e-mailed and called that "when making choices of what to cut out of the Sports section, we were faced with a big challenge. We needed to cut the equivalent of one-half to two-thirds of a page each day. Something had to give."

To which, one angry reader responded:

In an age where the print media is fighting to remain relevant and viable, The Courant appears to be doing everything it can to declare its irrelevance.

I have to agree. Newspapers rationalize changes like these because readers can be sent online to get agate, stock listings, movie times and TV times. If a reader goes to the Web to get the info, they’re soon going to realize they can get the stories online, too. And then one day they’re going to wonder, what the heck do I subscribe to that paper for?

The Courant’s official note to readers said:

The Courant is reducing the amount of agate on our Scoreboard page each day, eliminating the majority of summaries from the NBA and NHL as well as parimutuel entries and results . . . Please visit our website for NBA or NHL summaries.

That last word, “summaries,” probably should say, “coverage” instead.