Ideas Emerging

The nation’s phone books are losing content:

In Manhattan, the population in recent years has been growing at an annual rate of about 10,000 people, to about 1.6 million residents now. But the 2007 Verizon White Pages was 142 pages smaller than the 2006 edition. At 1,796 pages of listings, it is the smallest residential phone book for Manhattan since Verizon began publishing them in 2001.

The story is the same in other cities. Phone books in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix have also been shrinking, even as the populations have grown. And in fast-growing Las Vegas, white page listings grew by a meager 12 pages this year over last.

Why you ask? Cell phones. More and more, people are giving up landlines in favor of the telephone that’s always with them.

(FYI — I tossed out the household phone book on Monday because I couldn’t think of the last time I used it — why would I in a world with Google?)

– mc