Two published items caught my attention today because they focus on issues that are so microscopic in the context of the newspaper industry’s accelerating collapse that they barely seem to merit attention. Both appear in Editor & Publisher.

Letter writers Leo J. Shapiro, Erik Shapiro, and Steve Yahn argue that “There ‘Auto’ Be A Change for Newspaper Ads” because of changing demographic trends. People are keeping their cars longer, which will lead to declining auto sales in the long term and fewer auto ads, they say. But there’s good news: more people are riding bikes and taking public transportation! So get out there and sell those bike ads. And you circ directors, start marketing more aggressively to commuter rail stations!

Auto advertising, a profitable staple of newspaper income statements, was off a disastrous 13% last year. The overall decline in US auto sales will only worsen that very bad situation. I don’t see bicycle ads picking up much of the slack. As far as public transportation goes, the authors’ characterization of the increase in mass transit ridership from 2% to 2.8% of the US population over the past decade as a “sharp” rise needs no comment.

Also in E&P, editor Joe Strup asks “Will Consolidation at MediaNews Group Kill Guild?”. This issue is over the consolidation of two northern California newspapers, a business decision that will almost certainly lead to layoffs.

Questioning the impact of a move like this on the power of the Newspaper Guild is like worrying about a dent in the fender of your car that was just stolen. Of course the Guild will lose influence. Newspaper publishers are fighting just to stay alive. Who cares about the Guild’s bargaining power when the publisher has nothing to bargain with? We don’t hear much from the once-obstreperous United Auto Workers any more, do we?

You have to wonder what service E&P believes it’s providing by focusing on minutiae like this when much weightier problems face its readers.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune is the latest casualty of the overall decline of newspaper advertising. The paper, which is one of several in south Florida owned by The New York Times Co., will consolidate several offices and lay off an unspecified number of people.

While shutting down one of its regional print editions, “[T]he Herald-Tribune will start new interactive Web sites geared toward allowing the public to share their news, photos and videos.” Hmmm. Photo- and video-sharing might have been interesting two years ago, but it’s very me-too today. And what’s this about “share their news?” Is this a citizen journalism experiment?

Mark Hamilton notes the difficulty newspapers have reporting this kind of bad news about themselves. It is indeed a fine line to walk. While the reporters and editors no doubt have strong opinions about this story and its importance, they also have a responsibility to their readers to keep it in context and to report it straight. The WSJ’s coverage of the Murdoch takeover is particularly challenging in that respect.

It’s interesting to see the paper deciding to scale back on local coverage in favor of big features. In my opinion, local newspapers will be the big growth area in the business in coming years. Who needs another food section? But perhaps the economics just didn’t work here.

Recent headlines:

Post-Dispatch offers more early retirement – “Calling 2007 a ‘difficult year for the newspaper industry,’ the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said yesterday it will offer employees early retirement packages. The offer comes less than two years after about 130 employees, including about 40 in the newsroom, retired early…[the publisher said] ‘This is a great market. Our actions now will enable us to face 2008 and beyond in a much better position.'”

Sadly, no. Early retirement incentives don’t solve a systemic problem where costs are wildly out of synch with future revenues. This is putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound.

Sun-Times Media Group Weeklies Target Jittery ‘Daily Herald’ Employees – “In an unusual ad campaign targeting employees facing what might be the first layoffs in the newspaper’s history, the Pioneer Press group of weeklies is offering jobs to staffers of the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago.”

Kind of a good news/bad news scenario. I think it points to the growing strength of localized media. It’s actually getting cheaper to publish in print and this could lead to a resurgence of activity at town/community levels. The death of metro dailies could be accompanied by a rebirth of small-town weeklies.

AP to Shut Down Premium ‘Asap’ Service – “The Associated Press is closing down a 2-year-old premium multimedia service that emphasized nontraditional methods of storytelling, saying that it had failed to gain enough traction with newspaper clients.”

Good for AP for trying this idea, even if it didn’t play out financially. These “nontraditional” methods are the future of journalism, even if the economic model hasn’t yet evolved fully.

And finally…

At the New York Press: Layoffs, Circulation Drop, and No More Hooker Ads!– Manhattan Media, new owner of the New York Press, says it’s going to challenge the Village Voice and build a high-end audience. For starters, sex ads are gone, a move that could cost a million in lost revenue per year. Hooray for a vote of confidence in print and a decision to take the high road.

Bruce Brugmann writes of how a Bay Area chain buries news of layoffs and consolidation in its East Bay newspapers in an announcement in its San Francisco paper. It doesn’t even mention its own name in the headline.

Robert Wilonsky at Dallas Observer notes that Belo Corp., a major media holding company, refers to 2006 layoffs at its newspapers as “headcount reductions.” I suppose this is what happens when you let the accountants approve the press releases.

The New York Times will narrow the width of its broadsheet format by 11%, shrinking from 13.5 inches to 12 inches in August instead of next April, as originally planned. The move will save $10 million a year, according to E&P. Fewer and fewer people remember the days when reading a broadsheet newspaper involved infringing on the personal space of seat mates on airplanes and trains. Today’s broadsheets are increasingly looking like tabloids.

Of course, the 11% cut in space will involve corresponding reductions in the news hole at the Old Gray Lady, which is already looking at staff cuts to address its budget problems. This should accelerate that process.

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.'”

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.'”

Poynter Institute’s Roy Peter Clark writes about what he calls the “Big Lie.” It’s the story being told by many newspapers these days about how budget cuts and layoffs will make them better, stronger, more innovative, faster on their feet. Why can’t they be honest with their readers and tell them that these cuts are hard to accept but that the paper has dealt with adversity before and survived, and it can survive this challenge, too? Tell positive stories about adversity and achievement, he says. Readers want more positive stories.

While I’m not so sure I agree with that last point, Clark is dead on with his comments about newspapers’ reluctance to be straight with readers about their own woes. Dennis Earl comments upon the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s decision to bury news of its own layoffs in a trend piece on hard times in the industry. How hypocritical is it of newspapers to crusade for truth and clarity on the one hand and then cover up their own bad news on the other?

American Furniture Warehouse of Denver bucks the newspaper advertising trend by running big in the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, notes Denver Westword. The reason: too many electronic gadgets now exist to bypass advertising. With a newspaper, you know readers are going to see your ad, reasons the furniture dealer.

If you read this page, though, note the story just below it, which talks about why some young Post reporters are bailing out as the paper’s cutbacks continue. One scribe mentions that working at the Post wasn’t cool with his twentysomething peer group but “won him points with readers ‘in their sixties.'”