The front page of last week's Nepali Times had 36 percent of its space taken by the newspaper and 64 percent by advertisements. At your current rate of depreciation, readers can expect the complete disappearance of news stories by some time in mid-2004. Why don't you just charge all of us a bit more for an issue and clean up the look of your otherwise excellent newspaper?

Mark Zimmerman,
Patan

. (Nepali Times maintains a strict policy of always keeping its ad to content ratio below 1:3, as per international norms. Discerning readers will notice that the number of pages fluctuates in proportion to the volume of ads - Ed.)