While newspapers have provided a plethora of print on their ongoing struggle to survive, the similar audience issues of network television in the United States has been neglected by TV news coverage, according to a University of Pennsylvania study released last week, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

While print and broadcast media have been facing similar audience degeneration, both media have focused primarily on the problems facing the newspaper industry.
"The television networks have basically not been very interested in talking about television's problems," said Michael X. Delli Carpini, dean of the university's Annenberg School of Communication and one of the study's authors, according to The Times article.

The study analysed reports from 26 major newspapers, the evening news from ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS, and the prime-time slots of CNN, CNBC, Fox News and MSNBC, dating from 2000 until 2009. Statistically the two media disciplines saw very similarly significant reductions in audience base. Evening television news has an audience of 23 million people every night, this is down from 32 million in 2000. Newspaper sales have fallen from 56 million per day in 2000 to 47 million, The Times reported.

The Philadelphia Daily News will become an edition of the Inquirer beginning March 30, Editor & Publisher reported Monday. Philadelphia Media Holdings owns both titles, and decided to combine them, rather than fold the smaller Daily News.

CEO Brian Tierney said the decision should yield savings on wire service fees as well as increased advertisement revenues without requiring cutbacks in staff.

The two papers, whose combined daily circulation will be about 440,000, will be considered one paper by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. However, Daily News editor Michael Days maintains that the paper's passionate voice will be kept and that it will become a "unique edition of the Inquirer, and the emphasis is on the unique," E&P reported.

In an article appearing in the Boston Herald, Daily News publisher Mark Frisby claimed the move had nothing to do with the newspapers' bankruptcy filing on Feb. 22 and that the merger has been planned for more than a year.

The year 2009 will be one of reckoning for the newspaper industry, as it will have to come up with a new plan of action, Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, said in a speech on Wednesday. In the past, newspapers relied on newsstand sales, subscriptions and advertisers, he said, and as the new business model relies only on the latter, it "makes for a wobbly stool even when the one leg is strong. When it weakens, the stool is likely to fall."

Newspapers that are solely dependent on ad dollars, instead of on readers, will also begin to cater to the advertisers, instead of serving the readers, Isaacson pointed out in his speech. This will lead to newspapers creating a lot of sections about "gardening and home improvement," while cutting other sections, such as book reviews.

"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, Dr. (Samuel) Johnson said, it concentrates the mind wonderfully. Those fortnights are upon us, and I suspect that 2009 will be remembered as the year that newspapers, followed by magazines and other content creators, realised that further rounds of cost-cutting will not stave off the hangman," Isaacson said in his speech, posted on the Aspen Institute Web site.

Chicago-based Web start-up The Printed Blog is set to launch weekly newspapers containing reprinted blog postings on Tuesday in Chicago and San Francisco, Brand Republic reported Thursday.

Each newspaper will run the blog postings and other user-generated content, such as photos, along with about 200 advertisements.

Although the newspapers will start out as weeklies, The Printed Blog hopes to end up publishing up to two editions per day in many cities across the United States. The newspaper, which will be laid out like a blog, will be free, and supported by ads, according to Brand Republic. For example, larger cities such as Chicago could end up having up to 50 separate editions for individual neighbourhoods.

"There were so many techniques that I've seen working online that maybe I could apply to the print industry," Joshua Karp, founder and publisher of The Printed Blog, told The New York Times.

The hyperlocal blog content is hoped to attract local advertisers wanting to reach target audiences. Ads are expected to cost $15 to $25, and the paper will also house classifieds, according to Wired.