With pressure from the economy and competition, newspapers are slimming down, but Forbes' journalist Louis Hau does not believe that this development is necessarily negative.

Some fear that editorial quality may suffer, and some reporters may believe that a story is more important if it's longer, says Alan Jacobson, President of Brass Tacks Design, a newspaper design firm, but he assures that readers want shorter articles on subjects they care about. 

Last week, The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) said that print advertising at U.S. newspapers sank 9.4% in 2007 to $42.2 billion, "the sharpest annual decline since the association began tallying industry ad revenue in 1950." This means fewer pages, and even narrower pages, as papers like The NY Times and Wall Street Journal have adopted to save printing costs.

Cathey Finlon, Chief Executive of McClain Finlon Advertising, notes that advertising is "becoming more niche-like and more localized for certain kinds of companies." She cites weekly business journals and small community weeklies as those who have benefited from this targeted advertising.

Hau writes that daily newspapers should figure what readers want, then "[boil] stories down to their essential core" which "can ultimately pay rich dividends--if they do it right."

"The real challenge that it creates for a news team is to make sure that what you have in your paper is extremely relevant to your audience," says John Kimball, the NAA's Chief Marketing Officer. "If you're in the market and you're the local news provider, you sure as hell better make sure you're doing well in local news coverage. If you give that up or you don't pay attention to it, or you don't know the demographics or the market conditions, then yeah, I think you're vulnerable."

Source: Forbes