Newspaper future is one (or $1) vexing question

[Commentary] This week came word that Cablevision had offered one dollar -- yep, just one -- to buy the Daily News. We also learned that The New York Times, known for many things but hardly its brevity, is going to be producing one-sentence stories, "specially crafted for small screens," for Apple Watch users. At first blush, the offer of a single dollar to acquire a newspaper that once sold nearly 5 million copies each Sunday seemed like the ultimate insult to the struggling newspaper business. Really? Has it come to this? But there is the fact that the paper is reported to lose as much as $30 million a year. That's real money, and no doubt why the owner, wealthy developer Mort Zuckerman, is at last unloading it. You can't blame someone for not wanting to pay too heavily for the privilege of swallowing all that red ink. So given all the highly publicized travails of the newspaper industry, which has been thoroughly disrupted by the digital maelstrom, where are we now? Are there reasons for hope?

I posed that question to Caroline Little, who announced that she's stepping down Aug. 31 after four years as president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America. Little doesn't sugarcoat the problems the industry faces, as advertising has declined sharply along with print circulation. It definitely remains a business in transition toward a digital future. "We're still working toward a business model that will work," she says. But Little is encouraged by the advent of new revenue streams: paid digital circulation; newspapers setting themselves up as marketing consultants; events; and native advertising. And she is heartened by the overall size of the audience, which includes substantial numbers of digital readers on top of what remains of print circulation.