Newspapers: A Thing of the Past?

I'm sure that everyone has noticed as severe decrease in size of the Post Dispatch. The size of the current paper is a bit pathetic if you ask me. It is quite a few inches smaller than it used to be, has less pages, and fewer articles. The problem with this is that the price has remained the same and customers are receiving less. I know for a fact that the decline in paper size is not because of a decline in news. If anything there is more news now than ever with the economy in the state that it's in. I know that due to the economy some people have stopped buying the paper and that is probably causing all newspapers some financial distress. I do not think that this should cause such a drastic change in the content of the paper. There is always the option to add some more advertisements to the paper to make more money that way. In an article put out by the New York Times they stated that newspapers anticipated that there would be a large increase in online readers. As it turns out, this has not been the case. So what is really going on? Are people so fed up that they want nothing to do with the newspaper companies? Are they watching more news? I don't have the answer for everyone but I know for myself that when I want to know something I look it up online or watch TV. I never sit and read an entire newspaper or even a few articles. If a story catches my eye I will read that online but generally not read anything else on the site. What does this mean for the newspaper companies? Many have already laid off lots of workers. According to the New York Times The Los Angeles Times had to lay off 75 of its 1,300 employees. L.A. is obviously not the only company to be laying off workers but if they can't afford workers, who can? I have included the link to the article that I have referenced. It gives figures across the country about the decline in newspaper sales.

New York Times Article