Struggling urban dailies could learn a thing or two from small papers

For all the troubles they face, and they are legion, newspapers still enjoy what matters the most for any medium: the finest of audiences. People who read newspapers are the best-educated and most affluent of any community. They have the deepest roots. They vote, they sit on school boards, they own businesses and pay taxes.

And this remains so even after years of staff cuts at dailies around the country.

Papers all around the country are looking for ways to reinvent themselves in the face of the new and brutal economics of publishing. They're bringing in consultants. They're turning to think tanks.

Where they ought to be looking for inspiration and example is under their very noses, to America's small papers, those with circulations of 10,000 to 20,000.

Read more from Media Life.

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