The view from 2010

One senses that the newspaper business is experiencing a bit of a lull. The economy is improving somewhat, providing some hope that advertising revenues might recover a little bit. But the underlying problems with the print newspaper business model are still there. The Great Recession exacerbated the problems, but did not cause them. Newspapers have weathered past downturns better than many industries.

The biggest paper to undergo some major restructuring over the holiday period was the Washington Times, but that paper is a unique beast -- more of a vanity press than anything else -- and provides little guidance on how things are faring with more ordinary papers. Many papers will undoubtedly be taking stock now that the calendar year has closed and we may get a better sense in this quarter about how 2010 will be.