Although newspapers are already struggling to make up for lost revenues due to advertising moving to the Internet, economic problems such as a recession would serve as a catalyst, analysts said, according to a report by Reuters.

Separately, the investment giant also announced Wednesday the U.S. economy will likely fall into recession this year due to housing and credit problems.

“The recent data suggest that the U.S. economy is falling into recession,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a research note, according to an AFP report. “We expect economic activity to contract modestly through late 2008, followed by a gradual recovery in the course of 2009.”

Goldman analysts Peter Appert, Jason Armstrong, Anthony Noto and Mark Wienkes gave a “cautious investment view of newspapers and radio, a neutral view on telecoms and cable services and an attractive view on Internet and video games,” Reuters reported.

The analysts also forecast newspaper ad revenue will drop almost 8 percent, a much higher decline than the original expectation of a 2.6 percent decline. And as newspapers have already cut costs, whittled down staff numbers, shrunk page sizes and made online ad deals with their so-called frienemy Google, most are down to bare bones, with little more they can do for additional cost savings.