Where this leaves many papers is unknown. In the age before 24-hour cable news and the internet, the New York Times could be both good and in-depth and fast. However, the NYTimes will always be behind what I can get from any number of other sources today. They still have good analysis many times, but it isn't the Economist and it isn't the speed of internet news.
Eh, maybe I'm completely off base, but that's why I too still read the Economist while not being big on papers.
People are willing to pay for quality opinion.
People are also willing to pay for late breaking news from the AP and Bloomberg.
In addition to the option of paying for late breaking news, TV and radio both give it away for free.
The papers are just middle men. They add nothing of value to the AP feed that they just regurgitate.
And their editorial work is not anywhere near as good as that of the Economist or the Atlantic.
They add nothing of value.
Maybe the economist et al. are adding staff, but I suspect there are simply many fewer total investigative journalists, and so less investigative journalism. Maybe if the Chicago tribune hadn't cut so much, they would have broken the Blagojevich story instead of the FBI?
The papers could not find a good way to monetize the valuable investigative journalism and so they've cut it, and cut it and cut it.
The Trib did break the Blago story - the FBI wanted to keep it under wraps for a while because they didn't have all the goods. The Trib wanted to sell papers today.
The Trib has had decades to address Chicago corruption. They didn't do it when they had lots more resources, so it's silly to think that they'd do it now if they still had those resources.
And I like the NYTimes, just for their investigative journalism and op-eds (except Krugman ;-)). Exposing the warrantless wiretapping fiasco a few years back bought them a lifetime of goodwill from me.