This is one of the messages NAA has been trying to get across for the past few years, and it’s nice to hear someone else say it.

Acknowledging a really unpleasant June for the hundreds of newspaper employees who have been laid off while noting the online success and overall importance of newspapers, The New York Times Outpost blogger Timothy Egen wrote:

What started as layoffs and buyouts is edging toward closures and bankruptcies.

And here’s the great paradox: All of this bad news is coming at a time when the audience and reach of many newspapers has never been greater. The Internet may kill the daily newspaper as we know it, but it’s allowed some papers to increase their readership by tenfold.

Those who revel in the life-threatening trauma that newspapers are going through, saying they brought it upon themselves by being too liberal, too sensationalistic, too banal — choose your insult — miss the point. People are not deserting these complex and contradictory summaries of our collective existence. Not by any stretch.

Measured purely by number of readers in all formats, many newspapers have never been more successful.

The rest of the blog entry is here.