Final Edition

As newspapers across the country and here locally are on life support, smaller, niche online papers are not only surviving, but thriving. With a tenth of the budget and staff, one online paper, the Voice of San Diego, is breaking news and at times scooping the competition. Funded completely by grants and private contributions, this non-profit sees itself as part of the future of journalism - sans the print and paper. Seventy percent of its operating costs goes to the salaries of the reporters. In contrast, the Los Angeles Times spends seventy percent of its budget on production and distribution. Is this web-only, paperless outfit the next business model for the print industry? Can it do the job of bigger, more experienced newspapers?