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Printed materials are better suited to evergreen material -- stuff that is good to read today or next month or next year. The warm wonderful story of a boy and his dog will not age as a report about a fire in the 400 block of some street will age.
Features are a critical part of the make-up of most papers. Already the Washington Post has dropped a lot of the fnancial reporting on "closing prices" for all but the largest stocks as it is useless information by the time the paper reaches you. Comics are nice (I like comics) but the Post prints them in b+w on weekdays and Saturday (except Dilbert on Mondays is in color) and I can view a lot of them on-line in color.
The on-demand, as-requested aspect of the future information age is already with us. There are many portals (Yahoo and Google to name two) that allow us to select what we want to see. If I favor NASCAR reporting over NFL, no problem. If I want to eliminate all news about golf, it is as easy as clicking a box.
Many of the great (and former great) newspapers in the US have run at a loss. For many years they were supported by the television and radio stations that were owned by the same company. Here in the Washington, DC area there was a grand old paper called the "Washington Evening Star". After the FCC forced the sale of the associated TV station (channel 7 if you are counting) the paper slid downhill very fast. The Post managed to trade stations (it once owned channel 9) and maintain the revenue stream and its ownership of "Newsweek" also added to earnings. Being the main paper in town I understand that it does now earn a profit. The other main paper (aside from the free distribution types like the "Washington Examiner"), the "Washington Times" has lost money every year it has been around (25.)
Enjoy them while you have them, they won't be here much longer.
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