worldwide. For at least the last 20 years it has been no secret that readership was in decline. Prior to the electronic deluge of recent years there was just no interest on the part of the next and following generations to have a newspaper. I remember every time we visited the kids or grandkids I had to get up early to go get two things they usually did not have...the newspaper and coffee!!!
The marketing planners for newspapers have been well aware of the coming demise of their industry due to the electronic and especially digital impact.
As a result one should note that many of the much larger family owned and operated papers were sold off. While they all did upgrade the processing capability of what was reporting, their biggest challenge was to avoid being the purveyor of yesterdays news.
The wanted shorter set up times for getting to press and faster processing time once gone to press...the objective? Hold the presses as long as possible to get the last ball scores in and on the driveway by 6:30 AM!!!

For the owners of the newspapers current events and closures have been know to become reality for years. For Congress and Senate in the current bail out, entitlement, give away era to signal rescuing the newspapers is the equivilent to buying more comfortable deck chairs for the Titantic to make the trip to the bottom less painful.

What we could never accomplish was to get the newspapers to commit funds to become participants in what ever it is or was going to be that could replace them. Taking the money and running as usual was more to their liking VS the future survival of an industry.

Time and progress marches on no different than buggy whips and all the other aging, do nothing dormant technologies since.

Local papers local news (such as it is) can survive for a time. National news...forget it. I don't care whose paper it is anywhere in the world...by the time it gets to prints it is old news already.

BTK