As the Globe TurnsWhat the Sulzbergers should do in Boston—but won't, obviously.

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"Slow liquidation" shows up in the winnowing process at many local and regional dailies today: fewer reporters, fewer comics, fewer sections, fewer features, smaller pages, smaller news hole, and higher home delivery and newsstand prices.

Writing again last year in AJR, Meyer plotted an "elite newspaper" strategy for the slow liquidators. His plan is no resurrection prayer for dying dailies, but it makes more sense than running a newspaper down, down, down until it has one subscriber paying $5 million for home delivery, and then he dies.

Meyer thinks newspapers should accept that their mass audience is drifting away. (In the most recent reporting period, Globe circulation was down almost 14 percent over the previous year.) They should accept that non-news readers have stopped reading dailies, accept that newspapers can no longer satisfy everybody all the time with an "all-you-can-eat" buffet, and concentrate on publishing content of higher value. And they should "peel back" to their core functions of news, investigation, analysis, and interpretation "in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web."

I don't really expect any of these options to resound in Sulzberger ears. I'd probably fire me if I worked at the Globe and presented such a plan. But the Times Co. can't possibly imagine that the Globe will ever return to the peak revenues of $663 million that it enjoyed in 2004, especially now that all the economic indicators are moving in the other direction. (Estimated 2009 revenues: $377 million.) And given the severe debt problems facing the Times Co., losing more money in the short term at the Globe in hopes of making it back in the long term isn't feasible. Nor is a pure-Web path the way out. According to the Boston Business Journal, Web revenues make up only about 10 percent of the Globe's haul.

The dailies in jeopardy today aren't little, local ones, which serve specialized audiences with little competition, or the nationally distributed papers. It's regional papers based in big cities like Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and San Diego. As plunging circulation proves, the masses no longer think a metropolitan newspaper is an essential tool for urban living. (Elsewhere—Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, and Minneapolis—owners have simply packed on too much debt.) As a lover of newspapers, I hope this squeezing of Globe costs cuts losses, that advertising reblossoms, that readers return, and that black ink flows as wide and steady as the Charles once more.

As a realist, I know better.

Addendum: My friend Dan Kennedy covered several of these points smarter and earlier in a March post. Much recommended.

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At this point, would a Globe fire sale even attract a single fire engine? Catch me Twittering or send me e-mail . (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

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