Jay Marcyes

The best part of the article is this quote by Bill James on how newspapers started:

Well ... I hate to be the rational doomsayer, but ... in the modern
world it is unnecessary to cut down trees to spread ideas. We can
spread ideas perfectly well without paper. We're in this difficult
transitional period where it is unclear how the writers, reporters,
researchers and editors are all going to be paid for their efforts in
the post- newsprint world. But to me, it's just a transitional problem;
in 25 years we'll be in a better place because we went through this
transition.

the modern newspapers started about 1836. There were newspapers for
a hundred years before that, but they were relatively expensive. In
1836 somebody "invented" the steam-driven printing press ... not sure
tying together a steam engine and a printing press can really be
considered an invention. But anyway, paper was cheap, so putting
together a little engine and a little printing press enabled anybody
with a small investment to start his own newspaper. Every significant
city by 1845 had dozens of little newspapers, which were much closer to
Blogs than to modern newspapers.

One of the first things they did was start writing crime
stories, exploiting crimes for money. Then there was 100+ years of
newspapers getting bigger and bigger and more organized and more
expensive to produce. What were basically one-man shows, and then the
better ones hired assistants and then business managers, they added
sports sections, cartoons, advertising salesmen and then advertising
departments. They invented wire services (about 1890), and then there
were syndicated columnists and syndicated features. The newspapers
drove each other out of business for 100 years....

You and I entered the scene at a certain point, where each city had one
or two big newspapers which had hundreds and hundreds of features, and
they had these things when we were 10 years old and learning to read
and they had them when we were 25 years old and 35 years old, so we
tended to think of that as the natural and permanent order of the
universe -- but it wasn't; it was just a moment in time; the newspapers
were very different in 1935 and very different in 1935 from 1910 and
hugely different in 1910 from 1885.

Eventually the newspapers -- as a natural outcome of processes that
began in 1836 -- became SO big and so expensive that they were
dinosaurs, unable to compete with smaller and lighter information
providers.

We're back to 1836 now, in a sense; everybody who wants to has
his own "newspaper", and it's tough to know who is good and who is
reliable and who isn't, but the same processes are still running. The
blogs will get bigger; the good ones are hiring a second helper and a
third and fourth, and we'll spend a century or more sorting things out
and re-creating the market. It's hard, but it's not a bad thing. It's a
good thing.

What I think we are seeing with Newspapers, banks, car companies is a great reset. There evidently comes a certain point where a business is too big not to fail. These corporation's structures have gotten so big -- with too many employees and too many processes -- that they can't realistically survive. They are too complex. On top of their complexity, they have gone too many years making billions that they can no longer think in millions, which is what they can realistically sustain long term in the current climate.

BusinessWeek found that the L.A. Times could be profitable with 275 people:

Based on its current level of online ad revenue, he says, the L.A. Times
could support a staff of about 275 people at their present salaries,
and even offer a slight bump in benefits. This factors in office space,
equipment, and all other major costs. And get this: The paper would be
a solid moneymaker, boasting a profit margin of about 10%. 

Of those 275 folks, Stanton figures, about 150 would work in the
newsroom; the rest would sell ads, provide tech support, and handle
various administrative duties.

The L.A. Times currently has 625 reporters and editors. Seriously? Does a paper really need that many reporters? I don't want people to lose their jobs, but it seems to me they have too many people and too little money to maintain their current size. They have become too big and complex and they require a reset.

The great thing about a reset though, is that if a paper did reset, then they could begin the process all over again. Every year they would make more money, and they would hire more people, and then after a number of years, they would be back into the profits of their heyday.

Management of these companies needs to get realistic with what they now have and make the tuff cuts to staff and business or they are going to be destroyed by the much leaner -- don't forget smaller, and less complex -- blogs of today (who, sadly, are the newspapers of tomorrow). Death by a thousand cuts just won't do for long term survival.

Update May 7, 200: The Business Insider estimates the NY Times would need to cut 600-700 jobs to have a viable online business. Which would still leave about 400 people in the News Room. I can't be the only person who thinks 400 people is still a pretty big newsroom, I am pretty sure the NYT would be able to report the news as good as they do now with that many reporters.