For my e-zine swan song, I figured I might as well go way out on a limb and divine the future of regional and community media. So, here goes…

Newspaper profitability is imploding. Here is the latest round-up, as summarized in “Who Will Report the News?“:

Media General’s Virginia newspaper group, which includes the Richmond Times-Dispatch as well as papers in Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Danville, Bristol and other locations, saw month-to-month revenues plunge 17 percent in July. While Media General reported a nominal loss in the second quarter, the once-formidable Washington Post Company racked up a $2.7 million loss, reflecting $133 million in early retirement write-offs for the Washington newspaper and Newsweek magazine. Print advertising revenues at the newspaper sank 22 percent. Privately owned Landmark Communications does not report its financial results, but the fact that the Virginian-Pilot and Roanoke Times are still for sale after months and months on the market suggests that they aren’t faring much better.

Newspapers are all shifting to an Internet-based model as fast as they can. But newspaper websites can’t possibly support the volume of news generated under the old print media model.

For metropolitan newspapers, the end game is a business model as an online publication… a publication with lean staffs and paper-thin profit margins… a publication that produces a small fraction of news content that it did in its heyday.

The citizens of Virginia have to face the prospect that their traditional sources of news and information about state, regional and community affairs may well dry up and blow away.Where, then, will people get their information? I foresee four sources:

• Paid content for information of a highly specialized nature, such as newsletters, market analysis and business intelligence articulated by industry gurus.
• Public relations content dressed up as press releases and journalism-style articles.
• News aggregators that comb the Internet for content from news articles, press releases, blogs and other sources, digest it, repackage it and comment upon it.
• Superstars, the Oprahs and Rush Limbaughs of the world, who are such huge phenomena they can break through the clutter and capture the economic value now provided by networks, broadcast stations and other bundlers of cable, television and radio content.

It ain’t pretty, folks. I’m not saying that it’s a better world — I’m just calling ’em as I see ’em. I was hoping that Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine might last long enough to feast upon the decomposing remains of the Mainstream Media, but I just ran out of steam. More on that subject in the next post.