by Ken Ikeda, BAVC Executive Director

"By our calculations, nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet. In local television, news staffs, already too small to adequately cover their communities, are being cut at unprecedented rates; revenues fell by 7% in an election year—something unheard of—and ratings are now falling or are flat across the schedule. " - from www.stateofthemedia.org (PEW Project for Excellence in Journalism)

In the past few months, a number of compelling reports have been released on the future of journalism and the newspaper industry (see The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy; Reconstruction of American Journalism; The State of the News media as examples.)