Here is a clever analysis of the financial woes of the New York Times. It turns out the Times, which is mired in red ink, would do much better financially if they gave most of their subscribers an ebook and let their readers download the paper every day.
The newspaper has had a long and important run, but we don't hand write books on sheepskin anymore either, and no one seems to mind that. Things change. Hardly anyone under thirty subscribes to newspapers anymore. Where do the papers think their customers are going to come from?
I still think the news reporting and editing function is an important one, but the little exercise in thinking differently about distributing the efforts of reporters and editors suggests papers can survive if they let go of, well, the paper.