While other publishers have announced far more dramatic cuts in their news-staffs–in some cases, even shutting down the entire newspaper or switching to an on-line edition only–it has been death by a thousand cuts at both the New York Times and Washington Post.

But the impact, in the end, is still pretty much the same: a further erosion of the Fourth Estate in this country at a time when it is, perhaps, needed the most.

Today, like an earthquake followed by a large aftershock (only it is hard to tell here which one is which) both the Times and the Post announced new cutbacks.

For the Times, the lay offs of 100 workers and the cutting of non-union salaries….the paper also wants its unionized editorial staff to okay pay cuts,too.

Over at the Post, a new round of newsroom buyouts…with the ever present threat of possible layoffs down the road.

The irony is that more and more people are actually reading the product of these two papers–only they are reading it either on the on-line editions or as content on one of their favorite websites.

In both cases, they are getting the product for free which is not what one would call a good and economically viable business model for the two papers to make a profit.

Plus, the online versions will suffer from the staff cutbacks and buyouts, thus offering a lesser product to a greater number of readers! Not good.

In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen the demise of the Rocky Mountain News, the morphing of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer into an exclusive cyber version of itself, and the threat of the San Francisco Chronicle going under.

As a Reuters article points out, both the Houston Chronicle and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution are cutting staffs as well!

The day is fast approaching when a major American city will be left without any daily newspaper at all. And that will be the saddest day of them all.

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