Throughout the advertising downturn over the past couple years, preprinted inserts, which often contain coupons along with ads, held up reasonably well. However, inserts are increasingly facing digital competition, and because they make up half of retail advertising, newspapers need to address this issue, the Newspaper Association of America stated in a white paper published in late October.

The report was little-noticed, Poynter's Rick Edmonds wrote today, but newspapers are beginning to put strategies in place.

Gannett and the Dallas Morning News, for example, are offering special products for free to customers in specific postal codes who opt in to the offers. Gannett gives away its Sunday Select (all the preprints without the newspaper) while the morning news gives readers a compact news report with the inserts.

"However sound the logic, proposals for a collective response to an obvious industry problem tend not to happen. Blame inertia, blame the big papers and big companies who want to do it their own way, blame executives who can't stomach the expense of abandoning a current vendor or internal system and creating a new one," Edmonds stated.

The report, published by the NAA and Kannon Consulting, also points out that circulation losses and poor penetration among younger readers are another big concern amongst advertisers.

The top two U.S. movie theatre chains, Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc., have begun to cut the listings on newspapers, showing the movie schedules at local theatres, according to Huffington Post.

In most cases, theatres need to pay newspapers to print that information. They are now, in order to cut costs, directing consumers to their Web sites or third-party sites, such as Fandango, Moviefone or Flixster. These third-party sites charge no fees for posting listings, but make money from the advance-sold movie tickets. Many of them also feature film critics and movie trailers.

U.S. online traffic to AMC's Web site was up 21 percent in July compared with one year ago, and that to Regal's site increased 18 percent, according to comScore. This effort may result in some more traction.

Although the newspaper revenue generated from print movie listing is not tracked by The Newspaper Association of America, the amount is believed to be relatively small. However, every dollar matters in the tough situation newspapers companies face, as many have to cut staff, reduce the frequency of print editions, or even shut down the operation.