It has been a bloody week for US newspapers. Bankruptcy filings from the Journal Register and Philadelphia Newspapers brought the number of newspaper owners seeking creditor protection since December to four. Gannett, publisher of USA Today, slashed its dividend by 90 per cent. The Washington Post’s fourth-quarter earnings fell 77 per cent. Colorado’s oldest paper, the Rocky Mountain News, closed having failed to attract a buyer. Hearst, meanwhile, said that without rapid cost cutting it must sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times, in what counts as good news, now thinks it can pay the bills in 2009.

The advertising collapse hurts everybody. But fundamentally, the industry is facing a structural overhaul. Papers increasingly must be very large or very small. There are as many as 8,000 non-daily, community newspapers, with a median circulation of perhaps 5,200, plus some 1,400 daily titles. But demand for so-called “hyper-local” news (delivered on paper or pixel) remains strong in areas under-served by other media. True, titles are struggling as local retailers close or merge. But a survey, admittedly by Suburban Newspapers of America, found a 1.7 per cent advertising fall at community papers in 2008’s third quarter against 18 per cent industry-wide. Among the dailies, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times (with perhaps the Washington Post) can credibly claim a national presence. The mid-market, however, is packed with competing, major-metropolitan titles, largely distributing third-party content.