Ack! Some cities without newspapers by 2010?

This article by Editor and Publisher's Mark Fitzgerald quotes Fitch Ratings, a credit rater. More bad news for the newspaper industry. But we're not the only ones. We're just the most likely to default and get liquidated.

Great.

And my company is specifically listed as one of the most likely to default.

Super.

But we've heard this all before. It seems like every time we turn around, some company or analyst is telling us we'll be out of business by this date or that date. A lot of those dates have come and gone and we're still here.

This is my firm belief: There will always be newspapers. Even if one of these companies goes under, there will be brave souls there to pick up the pieces and buy the paper or start a new one. Cities need their newspapers.

Think about it. What if there were only TV and radio stations in your city. A lot of their news content comes from the paper or the paper's web site. What would news look and sound like without the paper?

Well, you'd loose a lot of the investigative stuff. That takes a lot of time and is difficult to present in a TV or radio format. You'd loose a lot of analysis. You'd get boiled down sound clips about stories, rather than real, in-depth reporting.

In one of my journalism classes in college, the professor talked about a phenomenon called "the Phoenix Effect." No, it's not the thing that happened to Jean Grey in X-Men comics. It's what happens when a newspaper goes under in a reasonably sized city. Someone buys it, cleans house and starts over. Or they start a new one from scratch. It's real and it's happened before.

And if a town or two has to go without a paper until the economy picks up again, then they will get a paper when things turn around.

Mark my words, we're not going anywhere.