Your points about the small town papers and the service they provide make sense, too. They are as necessary as the town criers used to be, but they’re more than that. They’re the glue that holds the community together. They’re the one constant, the bulletin board, the voice of the neighborhood.
They’re also mainly weeklies now, and that cuts down on news overkill. People look forward to a once-a-week sit down with their newspaper, and the papers don’t have to depend on news services to fill space.
Nice to hear about the Eccentric doing well, too. I used to write a column and occasional features for the Observer-Eccentric papers and back then (don’t know about now) I felt they were about as local and interesting as a suburban paper could be. They didn’t try to compete with the Detroit dailies, but concentrated instead on the communities they served.

Since a Save the Eccentric campaign began six months ago in May, that Birmingham paper has signed up about 2,500 new subscribers and increased advertising.

As a Nov. 1 editorial says: “We have torn the paper apart and rebuilt it, turning back to the original intent of George Mitchell and Almeron Whitehead, who founded the Eccentric in 1878, and we have made it once again a truly local newspaper. ”

Time magazine blogger Karen Dybis, part of the Assignment Detroit crew, said this last week about Eccentric supporters:

“Maybe they’re old-fashioned; they like receiving a paper with local stories in it. Maybe they’re stubborn and don’t want the economy to ruin yet another area business. Maybe they wanted to prove that David can still take on Goliath, even in this modern age.”

So yes, indeed: “Old-fashioned wares” can survive with “a model that’s been working for centuries.”

Read more: http://detroit.blogs.time.com/2009/11/09/read-all-about-it-people-save-paper/#ixzz0X2tvPbRG