Speaking of newspapers

Meredith survived the latest round of cuts at McClatchy and the bleeding seems to have stopped for the time being. Of course those who survived feel horrible about all the friends they've lost and now get to work with a permanent ax over their heads.

Here's the latest good news on newspapers, from AP:

"Half a dozen newspapers said they would slash payrolls, one said it would outsource all its printing, and Tribune Co., one of the biggest publishers in the country, said it might sell its iconic headquarters tower in Chicago and the building that houses the Los Angeles Times.

The increasingly rapid and broad decline in the newspaper business in recent months has surprised even the most pessimistic financial analysts, many of whom say it's too hard to tell how far the slump will go.

A few months back, when San Angelo's Perry Flippin went out with a cannon shot at the industry, I reacted kinda strongly in some instances, but I realized that I never made a point.

Here it is -- The newspaper industry is doomed because:

1. Newsroom executives (they used to be called editors) have grown increasingly elitist and separated from their readers.
2. The heads of corporate newspaper chains have grown increasingly elitist and separated from everyone.
3. Neither of these things matters because it's impossible to compete with the technology that everyone under 85 knows how to use. And the people who use that technology can, and usually do, find about 1,000 distractions before they decide to check out whatever happened with that Eritrea thing.

All that being said, I don't think that the local news will just go up in smoke. We'll have some kind of news service in the future. It's vigor and health remains to be seen.

Otherwise, me and the wife will continue to watch the state of the industry with an eye on a lifeboat.

From the aforementioned report:

In fact, the industry group that compiles and releases ad revenue figures, the Newspaper Association of America, this month stopped putting out quarterly press releases with the numbers, though it quietly updated them on its Web site.

NAA spokeswoman Sheila Owens said in an e-mailed statement that the organization will now put out press releases only with full-year data "to keep the market focused on the longer-term industry transition from print to a multiplatform medium."

Translation: "Turn out the lights, the party's over ..."