Exceeding your pagination seems to be one of the greatest crimes an editor can be accused of at Fairfax. Andrew Jaspan was rapped over the knuckles for it last month, and it’s a crime that seems to have spread to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Why else would the sport and business pages in the SMH lose half a page each most mornings? In Tuesday’s SMH, sport is just three pages instead of three and a half to four as normal. Business is just three pages with two pages of tables.

The cuts in business space are particularly noticeable on Thursdays and Fridays. The reduction in pagination in these sections has also coincided with fewer reports from staff, and AAP copy is turning up with increasing regularity.