Are you reading the Kent County Daily Times? I used to be the editor (mid-2006 to mid-2007). I know the paper is continuing to struggle and has cut back some under its new ownership. It needs more people like you.
To the GP - Yes, papers that deliver real news no one else is providing are more -valuable- to the reader, but they're also more expensive to produce. Staff costs money. That's why the people in the expensive suits are making what appear from the outside to be boneheaded decisions about what to cut. They've got two options: Lay out a lot of cash and produce a quality product, hoping the readers and advertisers will reward you for your efforts; or cut costs to slow the bleeding while getting pummeled by readers' and advertisers' shift away from print, a failing auto industry (among the biggest advertisers papers have ever had), and a general economic downturn. The dirty little secret is that in most instances, both business plans will fail.
Small community newspapers have a shot of surviving, but I fear not dailies like the Kent County Daily Times. There's just too much overhead involved in producing a daily paper. But well-done community weeklies have a shot. They're cheap to produce, can pack a lot of information into an issue, can deliver an explicitly local audience to their advertisers, and aren't as vulnerable to the Internet because immediacy was never their big selling point anyway. Twice-a-weekers like the Warwick Beacon also could do well (and John Howell, the owner/editor, is a smart enough business man to keep his papers afloat for some time, even in this climate).
