Platitudes come to mind as The Seattle Times tries to make the best of a rough passage in its long history as an independent newspaper.

"Necessity is the mother of invention." — Plato

"Obstacles are opportunities in disguise." — Anonymous

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." — Anonymous

The sayings all fit as we are forced to make some painful cuts in content. The necessity is driven by the continuing sluggish economy, the worst advertising recession in decades, rising newsprint prices and costly litigation concerning the future of the joint operation between The Times and the Hearst Corp, owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

We're doing what we can to minimize the impact on the quality of your newspaper, and we're making some improvements even as we make cuts. But there is no sense pretending we're making champagne from lemons. We wouldn't make these changes if we didn't have to.

I'll address pending staff cuts in a future column, as the situation becomes clearer. For now, let me explain two noticeable content changes coming next week in the Sunday newspaper.

We'll discontinue Sunday stock and mutual-fund listings, and we'll return to an unbound tabloid format for TV Times. For readers who don't use the market listings or weekly TV schedule, these actions won't matter. But they are important to those of you who do, and we're doing what we can to mitigate the discontent.

We decided to drop the Sunday market listings because, for the most part, they are available on Saturday. We save expensive newsprint by not printing the same tables twice. We retained Saturday over Sunday because the data are more timely. Beginning this Saturday, we'll enhance the listings to more closely replace what we now provide Sunday.

The "inventions" that come from this necessity include "Times Watch," a full page in the Sunday Business section that is sort of an economic weather page, including an overall market summary for the week.

We've also greatly improved our business and market news site on seattletimes.com. Beginning next Saturday, you'll not only be able to find complete stock and mutual-fund listings but also to create personal watch lists and track Northwest companies and business news at a glance.

Our research tells us that the majority of newspaper Business-section readers now prefer to get stock and fund prices online, and this represents a significant upgrade to seattletimes.com/businesstechnology.

"We think we are moving up the food chain to information and formats that avid business readers will value more than stale numbers we carried in the Sunday newspaper," says Becky Bisbee, Business editor.

In the daily Times we are weeding out information that has very little value so we can print the Northwest stocks box in larger type, making it easier to read. We are beefing up the content readers will find useful as they make investment choices — listing how the largest mutual funds and how the mutual funds that specialize in particular investment strategies performed on a daily basis.

Send us your reactions by e-mail to: Stocksandfunds@seattletimes.com. We will read all e-mails, although we will not be able to reply individually.

Changes to TV Times

Longtime readers of TV Times will see the coming change as "back to the future." We published the weekly TV section in tabloid format until 1996, when we switched to the current quarter-fold size, which is more expensive to print.

The biggest drawback to the tabloid is that it isn't stapled or pasted together, so the pages can drift apart through the week. Of course, this is avoidable if everyone in the household simply refolds the pages neatly when they use the section. (I hope everyone at my house is reading this column.)

With the larger tabloid-page size, we took the opportunity to give readers 14 additional channels, including MSNBC, Food, Travel, Golf, Speed and other channels often requested by readers. Listings will be more up to date and capture more late scheduling changes.

Complete customized television listings are available at www.seattletimes.com/television.

We will no longer include VCR Plus codes in TV Times, believing that new technology is eliminating their usefulness. For now, the codes still will be available on the daily TV pages.

Send your reactions to the TV changes by e-mail to: TVTimes@seattletimes.com. Again, we will read all e-mails, although we will not be able to reply individually.

We know these and other changes and cuts will be disruptive to many readers, and we regret having to make them. They are necessary to preserve The Times as an independent newspaper, which is something we won't compromise.

Inside the Times appears in the Sunday Seattle Times. If you have a comment on news coverage, write to Michael R. Fancher, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111, call 206-464-3310 or send e-mail to mfancher@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists