As he usually does, Scott Adams nails both sides of a complex issue while managing to bring hilarity to what is otherwise a pretty grim topic.

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.

It’s been a very interesting past few weeks with a bunch of stories relating to the death of older news and journalism models (daily newspapers) and the emerging models that hope to replace the dailies. Below are a few of the stories that have caught my attention…

• On the old model front, Gannett has cut 1,000 more people from its payroll, and McClatchy’s efforts to restructure its massive, crippling debt load failed miserably. An extremely insightful, detailed analysis of Gannett’s debt reveals just how rapidly that company’s balance sheet has deteriorated and how perilously close to insolvency the once stalwart publisher truly is.

• Also on the old media front, USA Today shuttered ‘Open Air,’ its quarterly magazine targeting more affluent readers, and Tribune also ceased publishing its weekly Sunday magazine.

• Even smaller dailies, who had seemed somewhat immune to the travails of their big-city brethren, are feeling the impact of the web as well as the current economic meltdown. Deal activity in that segment of the media landscape is rising, and valuations present some interesting opportunities.

• Despite the grim news, there are signs that things may have bottomed and that at the current prices, certain media companies present compelling investment opportunities. Even Sam Zell appears to have found a buyer for his Cubs and Wrigley and his cable business. While below initial estimates, the fact that it might get done at all in the current environment is amazing.

• Another positive sign for the dailies is the fact that some are beginning to see returns on their investments in emerging media and technology. Even despite some embarrassing missteps and the fact that many investments are still in their very early stages, there is hope that the flurry of activity over the past few years, while perhaps too late, might have a chance in salvaging some value for the large dailies.

• Even Google is helping the cause of publishers by helping pave the way for customized news delivery.

• On a much smaller scale, some monthly magazines like Men’s Health have even figured out how to capitalize on the iPhone phenomena to create a nice little recurring revenue stream.

• One thing certain to not work for any daily paper is charging for the vast majority of its daily news content. Some will try, and perhaps one or two (NYT & WSJ) might be able to succeed at some minimal level, but the pay for content model is a death sentence for anyone else.

• A bunch of stories have sprung up recently about emerging new models for online news and journalism such as Huffington Post and Politico seeking to fill the vacuum being created by the implosion of the dailies. Debates are raging as to whether Huffington Post, in particular, is a credible, high-quality source of journalism, news, and opinion or a trashy parasite, and the arguments on both sides are both enlightening, interesting, and entertaining.

One of the most compelling and critically important side stories (or maybe it is THE story and the business stuff is secondary) related to the death of the daily newspaper is the impact on our communities, our society, and our democracy. There are a wide range of opinions about what will happen to the vacuum being created as newspapers implode and disappear, or at a very minimum, become far less able to afford true journalism. I subscribe to the belief that the concern is extremely justified, but that successful alternatives are already emerging and will continue to do so at an accelarting pace. In any event, Doonesbury has a great arc this week on the dumbing of America and the panel below even connects to the death of newspapers….very amusing but horrifying as well.

Taking a few weeks off from posting the latest headlines concerning the plight of the dailies has created a massive backlog of items to list. I am not sure if the pace of noteworthy events is accelerating or if it just seems that way due to my short hiatus, but I have about 3 blog posts worth of items to try to get through this week, so here’s the first batch:

• The saga of the Boston Globe continues, with growing acrimony between management and the unions.

• Global readership of newspapers continues to rise, and readership of and traffic stats surrounding newspaper websites continues to lend hope that there is an answer for some dailies who are smart enough with their web offerings.

• News that Craigslist’s revenue will soon top $100M provides further proof that while the site has certainly played a role in stealing classifieds away from the dailies, the credit the site receives in the mainstreams press’ coverage of the death of the dailies is massively overblown.

• Given the recent public statement from Google that they will not be the savior for newspapers, perhaps Apple will step in to carry the day. Or maybe it’s the gaming industry. Or maybe it’s the oft-mentioned ‘user-generated content’ that is helping Hearst’s TV station sites.

• Newspapers are finally catching on to the power and appeal of online video. It seems to be working for Philly.com.

• What a shock! Sam Zell might lose control of his not-so-beloved Tribune. I hope the holders of the $8.6 billion in Tribune debt have fun with their new prize.

• For a preview of what’s coming for almost every single major metro market in the U.S., check out the battle in San Diego between a non-profit online news company (Voice of San Diego), a local for-profit online news site (San Diego News Network), and a cratering daily (San Diego Union Tribune) that was purchased by a private equity group with no experience in publishing primarily because of the daily’s real estate holdings. (Sounds pretty similar to the situation in Minneapolis, although we’ve swapped the local online-only, for-profit website for another daily over in St. Paul).

• True/Slant, the latest entrant into the for-profit, online news & journalism fray offers another possible glimpse into the future of online journalism.

• Right on the ball just like they were in accurately assessing credit risk in the housing, mortgage, and banking sectors over the past decade, Moody’s has released a report on the daily newspaper industry. In the report, John Pucalla writes:

“Ultimately, we expect the industry will need to reverse the vertical integration strategy through cross-industry collaboration and outsourcing print production and distribution processes,” said Puchalla. “Although newspapers may lose some of their in-house control over press time, they would also release resources to beef up investment in content and technology.”

In English, that means newspapers are over-leveraged, crippled by unions, and suffering tremendously due to chronic under-investment in value-added journalism and online technology. What timely and prescient insight.

• In a non-daily related story, the Computer History Museum has posted two fascinating documents that provide some visibility into the earliest days of Apple. These should be heartening for every entrepreneur and early-stage company that’s had to make use of their magic crystal ball to gaze into the future with perfect clarity.

The headline is not a critique of Warren Buffett in any way, I simply could not think of a word for newspapers that started with an ‘O’. In any event, Warren Buffett weighed in on the state of daily newspapers this past weekend at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting and articulated about as grim an assessment as one could imagine. (Berkshire Hathaway owns the Buffalo News and has a significant position in the Washington Post).

“For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price,” Buffett said. “They have the possibility of nearly unending losses. … I do not see anything on the horizon that sees that erosion coming to an end.”

Of course, as any good short seller will tell you, the losses will most definitely end when a company stops operating.

I’ve been saying for months that we have entered the final chapter of the daily newspaper story, and if there was any doubt as to the validity of that proclamation, those doubts were erased today when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced today that it will be abandoning its printed publication and moving entirely online. It is the first major metro daily newspaper to make such a move, and the floodgates are now officially open. Moving entirely to the web is the only viable option for most dailies, and there will be at least a dozen major U.S. metro markets with no printed daily newspaper by the end of the year.

It has to be the case that the New York Times is reading this blog. The story they ran yesterday on the front page was my #1 prediction for 2008. Either that or they’ve been reading Alan Mutter’s blog, or tweets from themediaisdying or any of the other countless blogs, articles, industry analysts, pundits, experts, or doomsayers that have been predicting the inevitability that a major metro market in the U.S. will lose its printed daily newspaper entirely in the very near future. So even though my analysis may not have been that original, it was a fun article to see on the front page of the New York Times 14 months after I wrote the same thing.

There has been a whole pile of additional news over the past week or two about the daily newspaper industry, along with a bunch of other interesting things I’ve seen and read, so it’s time once again to dump out my list of saved articles and links.

• Q4 ‘08 results for magazines and newspapers were even more horrifying than even the most pessimistics observers would have predicted.

• MinnPost’s David Brauer has a fix for the annoying way the Star Tribune paginates it’s online articles.

• The stars from the best video podcast, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht of Diggnation, made an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s show. Podcasts have now officially become a mainstream media channel.

• Moody’s new ‘Bottom Run’ classification of the worst credit risk businesses is filled with radio and newspaper companies. What a shock!

• Philadelphia’s newspaper mogul, Brian Tierney, whose company just declared bankruptcy, erupts at the bloggers who are dancing on the graves of daily newspapers all over the country and declares, “We’re not dead yet!” Death might actually be more appealing than the rotting-corpse, zombie-like state that most dailies are in these days. And yet, maybe he’s right.

• 4 dailies in Tennessee are trying desperately to stave off oblivion by sharing resources and cutting costs. At the rate dailies are going, we might end up with one giant (or small) newspaper monopolist that tries to cover the entire country.

• The NYT article from yesterday made the oft-repeated claim that Craigslist stands as the primary culprit behind the demise of daily newspapers. What a joke. And shabby, lazy, simplistic reporting, too. Craigslist certainly took some market share and eroded some revenue, but the site is largely filled with classifieds that would never, ever run in the daily paper, despite what they claim.

• Unions, which have been a substantial factor in the bloated cost-structure of most dailies, are now stepping up as perhaps the last-ditch saviours??!?!?!?!?!

• The New York Times is trying to generate cash from every nook and cranny in the business. I hope they succeed. I could not stand losing the Times.

• Since 1990, only 5 of the 25 largest papers in the country have grown circulation.

• MediaNews Group is the first major newspaper company to finally realize that the answer might be a customized newspaper. It’s most likely too late, but it’s about time that someone from inside the industry finally come to appreciate one of the solutions that has been widely recognized and bantered about outside the industry for at least a decade.

• Denver lost a daily. Seattle and San Francisco will soon lose their dailies. And there’s a growing list of others that will have no daily by year-end.

• Even Rupert Murdoch is having a tough time these days.

• Jason Calacanis, who made news this week for his brazen yet brilliant offer to buy a spot on Twitter’s top 10 recommended list of twitterers to follow for $250,000 (which, by the way, Twitter should accept immediately so they can actually start generating revenue), has written the best piece yet on start-ups surviving in the current economic meltdown.

• The free v. paid content debate rages on.

• Is Patch one of the new models that will fill the void when the presses eventually stop running?

Lots of stuff, and sorry for the massive, somewhat lazy dump of links, but the overflow of stories and links is getting overwhelming, and I’m afraid that it’s actually just getting started. It’s going to be a crazy year.

In December of 2007, I made some predictions for 2008, one of which centered around a major metro market in the U.S. losing its daily newspaper altogether. While the timing may have been a little early, there is little doubt that it will come true in 2009. The only question that remains is which city will win the race. For the last few months, the frontrunners included Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit. Seattle will certainly lose one of its dailies, and appears to be working hard to work itself into contention by losing both. Handicappers should not overlook other dark horses in back of the pack such as Buffalo and St. Louis either. And after last weekend, Philadelphia roared up to the front of the pack, and now San Francisco is making a late charge. It’s already a crowded field with more entrants every week in a race that’s anyone’s to win.

The pace of stories about appearing everywhere about the death of the dailies is reaching a fevered pitch, and everyone, it seems, has an opinion about what will and will not work to save the newspapers from an inevitable demise. The following are just a sample of the deluge of stories over the past few weeks about what will certainly be a major theme in 2009 (even more so than in 2008…).

• Time thinks that micropayments are the answer

• Portfolio’s Felix Salmon says they aren’t

• Slate thinks that newspapers should declare themselves religions and reap the tax benefits

• Maybe the future of printed journalism lies in customized, printed blog posts

• Can Google save the dailies by “merging without merging?’

• No matter what the answer is, at least the New York Times is furiously and intelligently attacking the problem

• And maybe the end of printed dailies is not as devastating an outcome as most (including me) think. Seth Godin, for one, doesn’t seem to be too nervous about it.