The Internet is usually fingered as the key disruptor for newspapers, but could change also come from leaner, smaller and younger print publications? James Erik Abels mulls this over at Forbes.com
The newspaper industry’s cost structure, staffing and share price are based on an outdated business model that continues to define financial expectations. So the goal would be to slough off enough costs to let younger, more nimble newspaper businesses live without the artificial market pressure of year-over-year comparisons …
… Certainly, newspapers are being battered by massive declines in advertising due to a bad economy. Yet that decline is merely accelerating an ongoing and devastating trend of the newspaper business being destroyed by the Internet. The financial expectations on a younger company–and the staffing and business costs it agrees to build into its organization–may be more manageable than they are for today’s behemoths.