When I was working at Southide Media and changing things as we went along, one of the models I came across was Bluffton Today. From there I started following Steve Yelvington's blog.
And now I follow him on Twitter too.
Today on Twitter, he asked: "If bunches of newspapers make 30 pct profit margins in depths of recession, does that mean 'death of newspapers' meme is BS?"
He then posted a link to these numbers which I'd actually seen before.
And then he followed up with: "The big mistake in reporting about newspaper 'woes' is to look just at a few big metros. They do not represent the broader newspaper biz."
But these figures are out of date. As Jim Hopkins himself says in a post under the blog entry:
"All the papers were profitable as of a year ago -- except for the Detroit Free Press. Since then, however, any number of Gannett papers may have become money losers this year after the housing bubble's collapse and the nation's dip into a recession. Papers most at risk would be those that had low, single-digit margins a year ago."
Not a good base to build an argument on.