FWIW, I just cancelled my paper after 13+ years of subscription.
Our local paper, the Grand Rapids Press, had this idea to limit deliveries to subscribers to three days a week, while still producing a daily for the newsstands. As a bonus(?), subscribers would get an e-Edition of the daily. I guess the reduced cost of distribution is going to save them lots of money. But the rest of the overhead remains, and has been added to by amping up the online presence.
I don't know why they wanted to (in my opinion) punish subscribers, as I would imagine that's how you would audit ad revenue. I work in front of a monitor all day, the last thing I want to do is to read the paper on my laptop screen. I sure hope they save lots of money from the reduced distribution costs, but many people in my area are dropping the paper.
I'm guessing once you push them to the web, either they will take to it completely and the newspaper companies will not have to actually publish anything. I sure hope they get the younger demographic reading their sites, but they have a world of choices beyond the local newspaper media outlets. I don't think it will happen.
Then there are people like myself who actually liked the physical newspaper and will ignore these local sources of news for other sources on the web. I believe that the newspapers ceding their territory will allow local radio and TV outlets to become that much stronger.
It may be a no-win situation for them, but at least when they were providing an actual product AND service, there was value. If these news services all want to be a localized Yahoo!, then good luck to them.
