Not surprisingly, there’s been a ton of news of late surrounding the daily newspaper industry, but the summary of it all is that as bad as things are for the dailies, these businesses are incredibly gifted at finding new, imaginative ways to make things even worse.

• Newspaper revenues are down 29%, and papers around the country continue to crater. Freedom Communications, owner of 33 dailies (including the Orange County Register) and 70 weekly newspapers, filed for bankruptcy this week while the San Francisco Chronicle is cutting more employees. Ann Arbor lost its daily entirely, the L.A. Times is restructuring its sales force (as if that’ll help in the least), and Rupert has shuttered his free London Paper. With no attractive offers, the Austin American Statesman was taken off the block, while local investors purchased dailies in Philadelphia and bidders are emerging for the Boston Globe.

• Want to see local movie listings in the paper? Sorry.

• The debate over paid news continues to rage with more stories here and here.

• Rather than charging for online news, maybe the answer is better distribution through e-readers or ‘hyperdistribution.’

• Due to a string of bankruptcies that have placed media companies into the hands of creditors (like some cruel game of hot potato), the largest publisher in the country at the moment is….J.P. Morgan. The Banking giant now controls Readers Digest, Source Interlink Media and American Media Inc. which have combined revenue of just over $5 billion.

• Local news is a big deal these days and is being looked to as the savior for local dailies (as if it hadn’t always been). As everyone except daily newspaper publishers has known for years and years, the strategy of gutting local coverage in favor of generic AP stories and reruns from other newspapers has proved fatal for almost every local daily in the country. Now, after virtually every newspaper in the country is either on its last legs or already in bankruptcy, local news is back in favor.

• Local news is even big enough to be fueling some M&A activity. Local blog site Examiner.com has acquied NowPublic for an undisclosed sum. NowPublic raised $10.6 million last summer from lead investor Rho Ventures and seed investors Brightspark and the Working Opportunity Fund.

• Even the most dysfunctional paper in the country is seeing the local light. The Tribune Company has started a local blog network to boost its online coverage of all things local. Too little, too late, I’m sure, and they’ll undoubtedly find a way to screw it up, but at least they got the right answer eventually.

• Speaking of the most dysfunctional paper in the country, Tribune has finally sold the Cubs. Unfortuantely, only now is the greatest fraud in the industry’s final chapter receiving the scrutiny it should have from the very start.

• And finally, in the most baffling, head-scratch-inducing development over recent weeks, the same businesses that were slow to appreciate and effectively leverage the digital tsunami that swept across the industry are now letting go of the very people who have any chance of saving them.

It continues to dumbfound me how much this industry enjoys digging its own grave.

Avista Capital Partners, owners of the Star Tribune, announced this morning that they did not make their quarterly interest payment on the $96 million in junior debt that accompanied the roughly $330 million in senior debt used to finance the $530 million purchase of the daily newspaper. While CEO Chris Harte reported that the company has sufficient cash to make the interest payment, he stated that they chose not to make the payments as the company works through renegotiations on the terms and structure of the debt and the entire balance sheet. While Harte’s comments may or may not be accurate, the daily is most certainly now in default on a meangful portion of its debt and is one step closer to insolvency.

In the race with Chicago to see which metro market loses its daily first, Minneapolis has clearly taken a sizeable lead. Interestingly, just as Tribune’s fate might depend on the success of the Cubs and the value that that franchise might fetch in the market with cash proceeds being used to pay down debt, the Star Tribune’s fate is similarly tied to the Minnesota Vikings who are eyeing the paper’s land holdings in downtown Minneapolis on which they are exploring building a new stadium. Who would have thought that the demise of two prominent dailies could be such a ’sporting’ event.