More on the US Newspaper Crisis

This time around, the author of this article, Nat Ives, from Advertising Age, claims that the problems are not intrinsic to the newspapers, but to the owners who bought them at a prohibitive cost.

In fact, Ives says that the vast majority of newspapers in the US are doing just fine, thank you very much, especially those serving smaller cities.

Even as they take blow after blow from recession and digital media, newspapers themselves still earn decent profits. They do even better outside big cities, which tend to get all the attention.

"Not a lot of papers are operating at a loss," said John Morton, the veteran industry analyst. "There are roughly 1,400 daily newspapers. We only hear about the top markets. That leaves at least 1,300 papers out there."

Publicly owned newspapers averaged an operating profit of 10.8% in the first three quarters of last year, Mr. Morton said. That's not the margin enjoyed by newspapers when they were monopolies, but it's not nothing either.

This is a good read.