All we know for sure is the Mercury News' editor suddenly resigned. The rumors say she proposed too many changes, some of which fulfilled my prediction that standalone Sports sections could soon hit the cutting room floor.

Here's how E&P; reports the proposed changes to the newspaper:

(Deputy Managing Editor Matt) Mansfield said the specific changes would have taken the current four-to-five section design and set a standard three-section paper with all news in the first section, business and technology in the second section, and sports and entertainment in the third. "It would have been a little bit of a cutback in pages, but it was just the sections that they looked at changing," he recalled.

Editor Carole Leigh Hutton is already gone, and she's replaced by MediaNews VP David J. Butler, who is apparently oblivious to the sharp declines in circulation and revenue his newspaper is experiencing. In comments to the newsroom, Butler criticized proposals from the "Rethinking Project" as too bold for the moment.

Too bold? Reports say the Mercury News had more than 400 editorial employees in 2005 but has since cut about 200. Layoffs were announced as recently as last month.

In the face of that obscene amount of failure, don't we want the newsroom and its editors proposing bold changes?

Remember during the New Hampshire debate when John Edwards seemed to team up with Barack Obama against Hillary Clinton, saying, "Every time he speaks out for change, every time I fight for change, the forces of status quo are going to attack."

Edwards easily could have been talking about the newspaper industry.