Newspapers: 'how news can no longer sustain itself'

Here we sit at the dawn of a new media age, yet for most newspapers the future seems bleak, hazy, unclear, coupled with a growing economic crisis spanning the globe.

As Nigel Barlow points out in his post: The digital newsroom and how news can no longer sustain itself, if print publications die, there will be no content for websites to feed off unless there is money being made somewhere along the line to pay the bills.

Nigel quotes Frédéric Filloux from his post The economics of moving from print to online: lose one hundred, get back eight:

Let’s kill a myth. The dream of a compact newsroom, able to output a high-intensity general news website doesn’t fly. Numbers simply don’t add up.

In the UK, Roy Greenslade asks Which regional group will collapse first?:

Note especially [Jane] Martinson's conclusion about Britain's provincial newspaper industry: "After years of falling sales, costs at heavily consolidated regional newspapers are already cut to the bone. Only print production could be cut further and most newspaper groups are already doing that."

There is no tried and tested business model, few groups have the ownership structure of The Guardian's Scott Trust.

Few titles around the world are making any serious revenue online, but let's hope some come up with some successful strategies and hope arrives despite these bleak economic times.