The newspaper industry by all appearances (is) starting to come apart. Between operational fiascos and flailing attempts to slash costs on the fly, it’s clear that the print newspaper business, which has been fretting over a looming crisis for the last 15 years, is struggling to stay afloat. There are smart people trying to innovate, and tons of great journalism is published daily, but the financial distress is more visible by the week.
The bread and butter for most of the industry is local information. But it has become seemingly impossible to make money creating daily compendiums and throwing it on people’s doorsteps. And it’s not just newspapers. AOL’s ambitious local news effort, called Patch, is losing $150 million a year, by some estimates, and is no closer to cracking the code.
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