The Dominos Start to Fall

It's hardly a surprise, but the struggling Minneapolis Star Tribune filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last night. Coming right on the heels of Gannett's announcement of one-week unpaid employee furloughs, more cuts at the Boston Globe, the spectre of the likely closing of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (if it cannot be sold) and a similar fate looming for the Rocky Mountain News–not to mention the bankruptcy filing last month by Tribune Co.–the magnitude of the newspaper's industry's problems is becoming starkly apparent. (See the Falling Dominos list in the right column of this blog for a running tally of the most significant, industry-changing events. I'll keep it up to date.) (Update: Oops, there goes the Tucson Citizen.)

These won't be the last tremors to shake the newspaper business–just count the ads and classified pages in your local paper. It won't take long. There's much more to come. 

Who's next? The Chicago Sun-Times? Lee Enterprises? Journal Register? The San Francisco Chronicle? The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News? A paper or company nobody expected? Probably all of the above, and more. These are dark times indeed for newspapers. The only bright spot may be imagining what can emerge from the wreckage. It's time to look forward, not back. 

To paraphrase Gil Scott-Heron, the revolution will not be printed. It will be Tweeted, Flickred, Googled, craigslisted, and a million other things. Print isn't going to disappear. But a year from now, the American newspaper business is going to look very different than it does today, and some cities will be learning to get their daily news and information fix in new ways. Bet on it.