Baltimore City Paper: NEWS:

"“To me, what’s happening as symbolized by the dismantling of these foreign bureaus is a single-minded focus on bolstering short-term profit margins at the expense of building long-term foundations of a news organization,” says Marimow, himself a Tribune Co. shareholder. “And to me, Baltimoreans specifically and readers in general know when a newspaper has been diluted. And I, for one, do not subscribe to the notion that homogenous newspapers attract and retain readers.”"

I subscribe to the papers should get fatter and deeper, become more essential to their reader's lives than trying to please the focus groups of non-readers.

Who are these people in the focus groups that don't read the paper? Do they care about the World around them? If your trying to recruit a bunch of stoners and burnouts, they will never read the paper.

The thing with media is that they are competing with the Web for news. The Web is very broad and not too deep (or only in specialized subjects). Newpapers can fill that gap and go deeper (I'm not saying New Yorker deep, but a few of thousand words about City Hall is always good for the community).