Why isn't my paper carrying more business coverage?

San Jose Mercury News columnist Mike Cassidy asked readers for comments about the newspaper, and one of the readers complained about the lack of business coverage.

Here is an excerpt:

Issue: “The majority of your subscribers are college-educated, high-tech workers,” writes Pankaj Dixit of Sunnyvale. “These people are interested in the business news. But you have made it almost nonexistent by … making it part of local news. The business news has got to be the prominent section.”

Answer: The Business section remains a prominent section on most days of the week. The crumbling economy and advertisers’ shift to lower-cost Internet ads, however, have forced the Mercury News to reduce the number of pages in some sections to save on newsprint. On days when advertising demand in Business is typically light, we produce a smaller Business section that is more economically printed as part of the Local section.

“That was a choice of how to spend money,” Butler says. “You either spend it on people or you spend it on newsprint. Our choice has been to spend it on people.”

Read more here.