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I think newspapers are only going to survive if they do more local coverage in a fair and independent manner. Some small nod to international events may be covered but mostly it should be local news where the people can determine for themselves whether it is fair or not.

If it's insightful and well written, they will survive, if it is crap they won't.

Since I’ve started my local newsblog (I cover city hall, school board, county commission, etc) I’ve come to the conclusion that local weeklies and such can be just as derelict in reporting as the NY Times or LA Times.

What happens is the smaller papers do a lucrative business publishing the “legal news,” such as sheriff’s sales, meeting minutes, delinquent tax notices, etc.

The publishers usually are not too keen on uncovering the brother-in-law deals that always happen in local government. Some of the papers would completely fold if it weren’t for the legal ads.

With the Internet in pretty much every home and as much as a dozen all-news channels on cable TV, the newspaper as we knew it is a relic that is slowly going the way of the telegraph and film-based cameras.

I stopped subscribing to my daily newspapers years ago when I realized they were only re-printing bland AP articles that I was getting off the Drudge report anyhow. Only the Wall Street Journal has anything to offer and now I get that online.

There is however a dearth of "local" news and if newspapers want to survive, they need to put some reporters back out on the street and focus on local news.

For example, my town paper (printed once a week) has a police blotter/fire log section. When I have occasion to see that paper, I go right to those logs but they always leave you wanting more information. For example, the police blotter will say "Report of deer attack on Steadman Street" or "Youths vandalizing cemetery" and leave it at that. Well, people want to know a little more than just that. Even "Cat up a Tree" might have a good backstory to it.

If the town paper put a couple reporters that focused on police activity alone, you'd have some pretty hard-hitting local stories to report and everybody in town would want to buy a copy or pay to see it online - because after all, we are all a bunch of nosy neighbors!

Then you have our local town politicians pretty much doing whatever they want because the local paper doesn't have the resources to cover them and the big-city papers don't care.

For newspapers, local news is where it's at but nobody is filling the void.

People like to see their kids on the front page. They like the police blotter, weddings, funerals, obits, and advertisements. Public notice of legal matters is useful. These things may survive in digital form.

OTOH existential self parody in the form of larger than life fear based promotions (eg anthropogenic global warming, water shortages, homophobia, underpaid public servants ...) seems doomed.

“I think newspapers are only going to survive if they do more local coverage in a fair and independent manner. Some small nod to international events may be covered but mostly it should be local news where the people can determine for themselves whether it is fair or not. If it’s insightful and well written, they will survive, if it is crap they won’t.”

You’re right. That is the only chance that local newspapers have to survive. Cover local news in depth and do it well. Unfortunately, I don’t think many will do that. They’re run by folks who are essentially clueless, who still don’t understand that the Internet has already killed them unless they radially change, and that there is no going back to the way things were.

I know for sure that this applies to my own local rag because I’ve talked repeatedly with the owner/publishers about these issues, and they claim to believe that the pennies they get from their super-terrible website will somehow magically makeup for the thousands they lose each month on printed ad and subscription revenues.