Are the Newspapers of your City Safe from the recession?

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090405/ap_ ... imes_globe

NYT wants $20 million from the Boston Globe.
This sounds like the NYT is holding the Globe hostage.

Here in Oregon, the Portland Tribune, a twice-a-week newspaper,
went weekly last October, cutting its print production in half,
and I'm sure The Oregonian, the main newspaper for
the state of Oregon, has a plan in case something happens to it.

The Willamette Weekly and The Portland Mercury
are both weekly newspapers. However, the WW is experiencing
financial trouble, thanks to the recession, and I don't know about the Mercury.

Where I live, the price has went up from $ 0.50 to $ 0.75. They have a free paper that circulates alongside the main paper here. If they would get rid of that, it would help offset their costs. Our paper also posts the news online for free...it's no wonder they are hurting.

I figure it's just a matter of time before all newspapers start charging for online news. I don't see standard newspapers going away completely though...it's like the e-book vs. old fashioned book thing...it just aint the same.

The real issue we should be talking about is that what if all newspapers decide to go straight online? How would people read their news while commuting to work on train or car? On the car side, most local news radio stations don't cover real local news, they only report crime, celebrity, and national news.

And do not get me started on local tv news.

I have to agree with online news VS regular news.
It is not the same.

Here in Portland, it is only a matter of time
before free newspapers like the Portland Tribune
or the Willamette Weekly start charging for papers.

The Oregonian charges 75 cents for daily papers and $2 for the Sunday paper.

As for that question, most newspapers would go bankrupt
if they decided to be online-only newspapers.
Public transit users would have to wait until the afternoon
or the evening to obtain news from the TV.

OK, I should get started on the problems with tv news. However it will be short: American television news currently does not goes into the same kind of news as newspapers. Local TV news is the same forumula or crime, scandal, celebrity, disaster and such. Little actual news from the local area unless it's a human-interest story. National news from TV improves, but they don't do much real investigative stories unless you count the consumer-related stories.

I second that.

No business is absolutely safe from recession.

ruveyn

I have an idea:

How about having everyone pay something like a $15.00 a year tax to a trust account that would in turn pay people who report news based on how many people read their writing on the internet and also reputation of accuracy which in turn would be based on a public vote also on the internet. It would be something similar to a town crier system. Each person voting on a crier would have a secret password so that nobody could vote more than once for a particular crier.