Is this the death spiral of newspapers?

Gannett’s second round of furloughs is the lead story in today’s on-line Editor & Publisher (also reported in today’s Advocate). E&P’s home page listed serious financial woes of Advance Newspapers, Newhouse Papers, Charlotte Observer, San Antonio Express, Lexington Herald-Leader, Star Ledger, Tucson Citizen, Memphis Commercial Appeal, and the Champaign News-Gazette. All that reported today.

When the apparent death spiral bottoms out, what will be left? Among those who say nothing will be left of newspapers except their on-line mortuaries is one of the E&P columnists who stopped his newspaper subscription months ago.

I disagree. Printed news will survive, perhaps in a way I suggested 12/30/08 (Newspapers, dump the herd mentality and save thyselves).

It may be too late now, but had newspapers changed their “business model” a few years ago to accommodate the obvious differences between on-line offerings and that which is sold on newsprint, I believe they’d be much better off.

I feel sorry for Gannett’s local employees, particularly news staffers who seem to be working at local news reportage in what must be a very difficult, anti-productive environment. Nobody told me that, but I’ve weathered similar newsroom situations and I think they are recognizable from afar.

But I don’t feel sorry for Gannett, the giant that sucked the blood out of truly successful newspapers like the Advocate so that it might use the money to buy up what remained of its competitors - and expand the empire at what appears to have been reckless speed.

I wrote 2/19/07 (A level field is bad for newspapers) “... the local Gannett-owned newspaper has been doing the exact opposite of what is normally preached to advertisers: if business is down, spend more to get it back. Instead, Gannett in Newark has killed off its daily television schedule and TV column. It has all but dismantled entirely its weekly "Booster," a once-beloved paper whose history goes way back before Gannett bought its way into Central Ohio. The Advocate is skinnied down, some days, to newsletter size.

“Gannett is getting beat. Gannett is getting beat because it is a corporation headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. In spite of its 46% gross margin in 2005, it can't afford pretense at full news coverage.

“Gannett is getting beat because its real interests are in a far-off corporation and not this or any other particular community. It gets no allegiance because it gives none.”

One might hope for the day when all the media-holding companies will go under, opening the way for lots of little guys with ambition and guts to open little newspapers which have to compete for customers of news and advertising. But no. If it ever got to that point, big government will bail out big media with taxpayer dollars, just has it has for banks, automakers, insurers and others.

Death spiral or not, newspaper readers are - and will remain - patsies of the system.