Mark Potts prescribes a half-dozen radical changes newspapers must make to survive. All of his ideas make perfect sense and five years ago they might have actually saved some newspapers. Unfortunately, the industry collapse is gathering speed so rapidly that it’s too late to make the kind of strategic, structural changes he suggests. People on sinking ships can’t choose that time to initiate repairs to the hull. Potts cites “fear gripping the industry and, unfortunately, the unimaginative responses to it.” Has anyone seen a newspaper really get out front of the digital and demographic revolution and do something imaginative to cope with it? Share your comments.

Highlights from today’s e-mail newsletter:
Report: Young Adults Avoiding Newspapers — and Other News Outlets – E&P’s take on the Shorenstein study referenced earlier on this blog adds the interesting stat that only 9% of teenagers say they read a daily paper. Among people over 30, that figure is four times as high.
Scripps Makes It Official: ‘Cincy Post’ Folding With End Of JOA – No surprise apparently, as circulation had dropped a stunning 85% since the JOA was signed 30 years ago.
Pioneer Press Editor Won’t Rule Out More Cuts in ’07 – A Minnesota fixture for decades, the paper has cut nearly 20% of news staff in a little more than a year and may cut further. Quoting E&P: “If the predicted 15 newsroom employees leave through this buyout, that will mean the news staff had shrunk from 202 before the 2006 buyout down to 165 at the end of the latest one. When asked if a third buyout is more or less likely before the end of 2007, Fladung said, ‘I am not into predicting the future. I sure hope it is less likely.'”

In a post that’s curiously date-stamped 10 days in the future, BusinessWeek’s, Jon Fine asks if the San Francisco Chronicle will be the first major metro daily to give up the print ghost. I suggested much the same thing a few weeks ago, noting that the Chron’s decision to eviscerate its news staff amounted to committing suicide.

I’m not a media critic, but I’ve always been surprised at how awful the SF Chronicle is. It seems to me that a great city like San Francisco deserves a better paper, but the two dailies in that area seem to have ceded that title to the Mercury News down the peninsula. I can’t speak to the quality of the Chron’s website, but if, as Fine suggests, it’s a better product than the print edition, you have to wonder how much longer the Hearst Corp. will commit to producing an inferior product on paper when its audience is one of the most digitally hip and wired in the world. Why not pull the plug and invest in an online franchise that has the potential to dominate a lucrative market?