How Bad Are Things in the Newspaper Biz?

So bad that someone - with no irony - has created a site called Praying for Papers. Its self-described mission:

"This is a troubling time in the newspaper business. Every day we hear stories from papers that are laying off employees and struggling to stay afloat.

Our idea at Praying for Papers is to encourage anyone who is touched by this shift in our industry to include it each day in their prayer life..."

The Boston Globe continues to devolve into just another paper with another group of columnist layoffs, including the aptly named Royal Ford, whose last column was at the end of April. Ford was replaced by a generic column from cars.com. I suspect that something like the Kindle will become part of the surviving papers' business model in the future. How they'll make money remains to be seen, but certainly the dead tree distribution can be replaced by something more cost-efficient.