The endangered newspaper, part I

Today's The Dallas Morning News reports that the paper is trying a new strategy to improve its news product while continuing to attract and retain new readers. I wish them luck. I am a subscriber, and I have written my master's degree thesis on the paper's attempt to stay in business.
This is important to you too. Newspapers remain an important source for original reporting, which, among other contributions to society, helps to keep the Web full of credible, topical information. Let's face it, our democracy depends on this. Whether reliable journalism comes from radio, television, bloggers or newspapers, we need this information in order to make informed choices such as who represents us in the school board, the state senate or the White House. Newspapers, for now, continue to be the most active source of this necessary information. But most of us know by now, The News, like most daily newspapers, is struggling to stay in business.
Under these circumstances, what are newspapers to do? Essentially, what The News is attempting to do, which is to fix their business model. The Internet is not killing newspapers, really. Their business model, which has relied heavily on classified advertising, created a weak spot easily infiltrated by free or low-cost Internet advertising such as craigslist and Monster. In 1950, classified advertising was 18 percent of most papers' revenues. In 2000, that number was 40 percent, according to newspaper scholar Philip Meyer. In his book The Vanishing Newspaper, Meyer also points out that advertising in general has taken on a larger part of most newspapers' revenue. In 1950, it made up 71 percent, while in 2000 that number grew to 82 percent.
So, if a newspaper like The News plans to hire reporters, as opposed to continue laying them off like The News has regularly done in the past 10 years, then I'm inclined to pay more for my subscription. But, for just how much longer our culture will continue to pay for daily information media like the newspaper, remains to be seen.