To add to the cavalcade of bad news about newspapers, here's an April 25 column by the Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias.

An excerpt:

News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch sees the digital writing on the wall.

"Four out of every five Americans in 1964 read a newspaper every day; today only half do," he told the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington two weeks ago. "In the face of this (technological) revolution, we have been slow to react. We have sat by and watched while our newspapers have lost circulation.

"Unless we awaken to these changes, we will as an industry be relegated to the status of also-rans."

Also-ran? From the way things are going, the industry will need to be taken out back and shot.

Last week, the Economist said Murdoch's speech "may go down in history as the day that the stodgy newspaper business officially woke up to the new realities of the Internet age."

If that didn't mobilize publishers to stop ignoring blogs and other online opportunities, perhaps a study commissioned by the Carnegie Corp. of New York could.

Abandoning the News, which adds to the already grim statistics on newspaper-reading habits of demographically desirable 18-34 year olds, emphasises how newspaper execs have either kept their head in the cyber-sand or reacted too slowly in developing new products.