Newspaper Newsroom Investment

The best hope for keeping staffs and news capacity whole turn on stabilizing circulation and ad-revenue trends. As recently as the end of 2004, an equal number of 250,000-plus papers had added news staff or held steady as had cut staff over a three-year period.12 So, best case, 2005 will be an aberration from relative stability in commitment of news resources.

The worst case is that a tipping point has been reached, that audience and ad revenue declines will prompt existing owners or new ones to make deeper cuts. The capacity of newspaper news staffs to offer thorough and aggressive coverage of their communities will erode subtly but steadily. Who will take up the slack? There is no obvious alternative .

Which is the more likely scenario is frankly hard to predict, and we doubt those who sound certain can really know. As the discussion of circulation and economics in this report has made clear, the industry has serious problems with its fundamentals, which is why stock prices are low. Yet the industry also appears to be more aggressive about innovation in new platforms and business models. Perhaps most important, if newspapers do not make the transition to online newsgathering, it is difficult to imagine who will.