A few times earlier this year, we've noted the sense of nostalgia that permates many big city newspapers. UPI explains one of the reasons behind it:

Three of the most prestigious newspapers in the United States, the New York Times, Boston Globe and Philadelphia Inquirer, announced job cuts Tuesday.

The New York Times Co., which owns the Times, the Globe and a number of other newspapers, said that 500 jobs would be eliminated across the company. The total includes 45 editorial jobs at the Times and 35 at the Globe, Editor & Publisher reported.

Philadelphia Newspapers, which owns the Inquirer and the Daily News, announced that it would try to eliminate 100 editorial positions through buyouts. The plan calls for a cut of 25 in the Daily News' 130-person editorial staff and 75 from the 500 at the Inquirer.

At the same time, the company plans to hire advertising sales people.

"We have to grow our advertising revenue," Joseph Natoli, the company's publisher and president, told E&P.

The Times said that details of its job cuts have not been worked out, although executives expect a mix of layoffs and buyouts.

Like most other newspapers, the Times Co. and Philadelphia Newspapers have been hit by declining circulation and ad revenue as both readers and advertisers turn to the Internet.

Related thoughts from Mark In Mexico.

Update: John Hinderaker of Power Line also weighs in:

As life-long newspaper junkies, we take no pleasure in the industry's current crisis. Apart from anything else, we web-based commenators need newspapers to produce the raw material for our commentary. But my sympathy for the Times, the Globe, the Chronicle, et al. is tempered by the knowledge that there is a path to solvency, which I think would likely succeed, but that they would never consider: stop being so liberal. Wouldn't you think that with newspapers nearly everywhere sliding inexorably downhill, just one might consider whether its readers--or former readers--were trying to tell it something? Like, we're not interested in supporting far-left nonsense?

But no. They would rather go broke than abandon their reason for being, which is, with only a handful of exceptions, promoting the Democratic Party.

Would moderating their hard-left politics help stop the financial bleeding? It's hard to say for sure. But don't you think that if they were motivated mainly be economics, just one of our major liberal papers might try it?