data = []
for line in content:
    row = line.split()
row = [item.strip() for item in line.split('\t')]
data.append(row)
fout = open('output.txt', 'w')
for row in data:
    fout.write('{0} {1} {2} {3}'.format(row[0], row[1], row[7], row[8]))
row.pop(6)
row.pop(5)
row.pop(4)
fout.write(' '.join(row))
Extracting only interesting columns from ASCII table