Some of America's Most Venerable Newspapers Face Extinction Unless they Evolve

for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier

Plenty of innovation is taking place, particularly at local papers, as the latest “Newspaper Next” report from the American Press Institute, an industry group, makes clear. It quotes 24 examples of newspapers becoming “information and connection utilities”, through such offerings as local internet forums.

Much of this decline is being blamed on the rise of the internet, which offers free, round-the-clock coverage, and which has provided a new, better home for classified advertising, once the bedrock of most newspapers’ revenue. But some of the fall in revenues is actually due to the economic slowdown in America, and especially in the housing market, which contributes a large slice of classified advertising.

The hero for industry optimists is Brian Tierney, a former public-relations executive who led a group of investors that borrowed heavily to buy Philadelphia’s two main dailies. He has since revived them with a vigorous marketing drive. He is also finding new ways to drum up advertising, such as introducing a business column sponsored by a local bank. People said pigs will fly before our circulation rises, Mr Tierney recalled in a recent speech, before recounting how he celebrated a rise in circulation by projecting flying pigs onto the walls of the Philadelphia Inquirer.