Is a newspaper collapse imminent?

Here's someone who thinks the death of newspapers is at hand:

http://mediafade.blogspot.com/2008/03/marketwatch-are-job-cuts-death-knell.html

It's hard for people like me to imagine a world without the traditional newspaper, but then my great-great grandparents could hardly imagine a world where a horse was simply a hobby and not a necessity.

Someday, maybe soon, newspapers will exist only in memory or as specialty publications aimed at very narrow topics or specific regions.

My question has been for the past few years is why the existing newspapers, which still attract a fairly large contingent of loyal, if older, readers seems hell bent to divest itself of even those folks.

A longtime reader, Gracie, of Davison, ran into me at a function in February and said she was disappointed she could no longer read my articles. Then she added at least she could still read Kim's articles. When I told her that Kim too was leaving the paper, she burst into tears.

Current newspaper management minimizes the connection that readers, especially the long time loyal ones, have with the writers. Now Gracie, who is in her 70s, didn't cry when I left, but she loved reading Kim's features and would look for his byline each day. She would often call him and talk to him about the stories he had written and the ones she hoped he would look into.

Gracie then noted that the cost of the paper had been jacked up by 25 cents a day at the same time the staff was being eviscerated. In addition, reader friendly features, like wedding and anniversary photos and announcements, which were once free, now come with a price tag.

Large coverage areas like Lapeer and Shiawassee counties are now basically uncovered except as time allows in an overwhelmed reporter's schedule. So it appears that the newspaper is prepared to write off large geographic areas from regular coverage.

This is in contrast to what the staff was told at the time of the buyouts when it was proudly announced that everything we have been doing, we would continue to do. That simply has not turned out to be true.

Don't blame the reporters, there are too few of them and they are stretched far too thin to do any meaningful beat reporting (see previous article).

On the flip side, the newspaper provides for free most of its articles online and sometimes two, three or more days ahead of when they appear in the home delivered newspaper.

The newspaper's financial support base is now secondary to the consumers of its free more immediate product. That's a business model that just doesn't make sense. At least to me.