Newspapers: Survival Of The Fittest

It's a staggering and sobering fact that more than 40,000 newspaper jobs were lost this year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. No Merry Christmas for those who remain employed in this decimated industry or those who were forced to leave through layoffs or buyouts.

The number of newspaper jobs lost for 2009 is nearly twice the 21,000 cut in 2008 and more than any single year in the past 10 years, according to Joe Strupp, reporter for Editor & Publisher, a 125-year-old magazine which appears to be yet another casualty of the recession. In an all-too-familiar story, advertising revenue, the lifeblood of the print industry, has slowed to a trickle.

E&P, sadly, is on the ropes. January may be its last print edition.

"Even with furloughs, salary cuts and numerous retirement fund freezes, publishers lopped off a tragic number of positions, even as they sought to expand online and, of course, increase workloads for those who remain,'' Strupp wrote as part of his top 10 newspaper business stories of 2009. "The count at the end of 2009 is 284,220 jobs. In 1999, that number was at 424,500. If things don't slow down, any attempt to properly cover news, and write and edit it, will be lost if it hasn't been already."

It's unlikely the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times will disappear, though the latter is definitely cutting costs and jobs. They have specific reader followings that probably will outlast any economic downturn. What appears to be suffering the most are many daily metro papers in America's largest cities.

Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Detroit, Denver and Seattle are among the urban spots with daily newspapers on life support or already lost because of weak advertising, high delivery costs, declining readership and fierce electronic competition.

In contrast, rural and more suburban areas seem to be supporting smaller papers, weeklies for example, through niche market advertising. Check out the ads in your local weekly -- affordable and targeted to your neighborhood.

What this means for business and consumers is a highly customized market match-up. The Internet provides a global vehicle for larger B2B and B2C endeavors, but hyper local print advertising still connects closer to home, especially where readers prefer traditional ways of doing business.

Smaller papers have a lower overhead and what they produce tends to make a longer, stronger impact. Surveys, including one by the National Newspaper Association, show many readers keep a weekly in their household for days and spend more time viewing the content.

A deep recession and soaring Internet use have rocked the U.S. newspaper industry to its very foundations. Online versions of newspapers, for the most part, have not generated the kind of ad revenue that print previously did.

What remains to be seen is which publications will survive and what changes it will mean in their business models. For sure, a challenging year lies ahead for the print industry as it evolves along with technology in an uncertain economy.