US newspaper industry dying
US NEWSPAPERS already suffering from stiff online competition, are facing a loss of advertising thanks to the weak economy.
Normally around now newspapers can anticipate boosts from upcoming holiday promotions and ads for new car models, but this year it has not happened.
Now newspapers are laying off hacks while they try to work out how to generate enough revenue from growing Internet audiences to make up for lost print ad sales.
Some newspapers, such as the Sacramento Bee and Fresno Bee offered voluntary buyout deals to the majority of their full-time employees. The outfits are going to freeze pay across the company another, Gannett, announced in mid-August it was cutting 1,000 jobs, including 600 layoffs.
The San Diego Union Tribune is to cull staff by more than 75 positions, including some 30 in the newsroom. Earlier this year, the rag gave 117 employees their P45s.
The St Louis Post Dispatch cut 18 jobs, while the Chicago Sun Times is talking about still more cuts.
The problem is that retailers are reducing back-to-school promotions, while employers are placing fewer job ads given the weak economy.
Estate agents are gutted and have been putting in fewer ads too. µ
L'Inq
AP
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In addition to issues you list the quality of most mainstream newspapers has gone to - - - -, as the entire newspaper has more or less become one giant editorial page.

If the newspapers were focused more on hard news and objectivity and not the political will/bent of the editors and owners (which are typically ultra-liberal), perhaps circulation wouldn't be fading so fast as well. I like my news with facts - not spin and talking points, or refusal to print an editorial of certain candidates because they disagree with the position, or reduced advertising rates to organizations with 'preferred' political views.

Perhaps the advertising revenues wouldn't be falling off a cliff if the viewership was not dropping so fast due to such poor quality writing and editing.
The old saw that the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it has another corollary: people viewed blindered ideology as worthless and find ways around it. And that way is the 'net.

In the US the papers are almost uniformly leftist, with only one or two centrist or rightist rags and those very local. And the population of leftist and activist reporters born of the Watergate era is rising, making activism one of the dominant features of American papers. So is is any wonder that newspapers are declining when they're not serving over half their potential audience?
US rags need to court more right wingers and other populations unable or unwilling to get news on-line. They already do somewhat using 4-grade language.

Rags are in trouble. Job ads for professionals are mostly all on-line, classifieds gone to craigslist and local papers, leaving car and retail shop adverts. Free Internet classifieds, news, commentary, software, pr0n etc. all impact old models.
As some have already commented, newspapers began driving an opinion and point of view, rather than reporting. While some love to hate the FoxNews channel, it's success (over traditional news and CNN) is the television equivalent of the same phenomena.
Newspapers by and large are propagandists for the fascist state and capitalist interests.

While it is tempting to believe that people have wised up and stopped buying the fascist propaganda rags, I fear that is not so. The success of Fox News and CNN prove that what people really want is bling with their propaganda. Black and white newspapers just don't cut it anymore. Yes they have started printing colour pictures but they are still that grainy pixel quality that is so 1900's.

If quality, fair and representative news was the issue then surely the television news channels would also be suffering but from what I hear it is just the printed media. 

The internet can certainly be credited with part of the loss to print media but the TV still provides more entertainment in their "news" presentation than the internet.


Papers have been granted great leeway in protecting sources, etc. Much more so than the average citizen. However with those rights come great responsibilities. The responsibility to be fair and impartial. They failed in that most important of tasks and are paying the price. Good riddance I say.
That's funny, I heard that the corporations that own the media are doing rather well. This came up earlier this year in when the FCC chairman was busy ramming through media consolidation regulations (the reason for the consolidation was "because the Internet was making business tough" or something like that).

Its actually rather difficult to find news in our papers -- the Los Angeles Times does carry bits of it but you have to search around the adverts.

...and I wouldn't call the newspapers leftist. We don't have anything like the Daily Mail because journalists here still take their job seriously.
What goes around comes around, for years the media has been lying to their readers, they have become propagandist promoting instead of reporting with no regard to the damage that is being done to the reader, now those same arrogant people are crying foul now that they are in danger of losing their jobs. they didn't care about us so why should we care about them.