SAD - AT 6:07 P.M. ET:  The Washington Post is contracting:

NEW YORK, Nov 24 (Reuters) - The Washington Post is closing its last U.S. bureaus outside the nation's capital as the money-losing newspaper retrenches to focus on politics and local news.

"At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it's necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country's politics, policies and government," the newspaper's top editor, Marcus Brauchli, wrote in a memo to employees that was obtained by Reuters.

The Post will close its bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, effective Dec. 31.

The news comes after the Post told several employees at its website that they would be laid off, and follows several rounds of buyouts in recent years.

The Post, like nearly every other U.S. newspaper, has been battered by falling advertising revenue and circulation as readers get more news online for free.

With a circulation of more than 582,000 copies, the Post is the fifth most read daily newspaper on weekdays, according to figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. It is the third most read Sunday paper, with paid circulation of more than 822,000 copies.

COMMENT:  We don't rejoice here in the financial decline of any newspaper.  There are employees involved - families.  And we need a variety of voices in journalism.  Further, depending on the internet for news carries risk.  The internet is a delicate mechanism, and we don't know what restrictions may be placed on distribution in the future.  There are plenty of forces, mostly on the political left, that would like to control the internet and use it to advance only their interests.

At the same time, newspapers must expand their understanding of why they're in decline.  It isn't just the internet, or the recession.  It's the way many of them have presented the news for a generation - too often with a smug, leftward slant, and a certain contempt for their own readers.  Does anyone doubt that the editorial opinions of The New York Times have drifted onto its news pages?  A number of readers have been turned off, and they drop out.  A better, more balanced product, may not save mainstream newspapers, but it would put them back in the fight.

November 25, 2009