As some big papers commit suicide, community papers do well, with fundamentals of local news

While some metropolitan newspapers "are attempting suicide," writes Tuskegee News Publisher Paul Davis, right, "Community newspapers are doing quite nicely, thank you, because they have not forgotten their mission, their responsibility to their readers, the service they must provide to their advertisers, their duty to report the good and the bad; to expose corrupt public servants who betray the public trust and seek to serve themselves first at the expense of the taxpayers."

Davis' column is prompted by the troubles of metro papers, some of which he says are obsessing about profits and forgetting about fundamentals. "Newspapers that do not change to meet the challenges of the times are the only ones which will die. Newspapers which exist ONLY to make money will die," he writes. "When you read a newspaper and find out you already knew 90 percent of the stuff on the front page, what is the justification for buying the reading the newspaper. Newspapers must be meaningful to attract readers. Good newspapers are filled with fresh stories and information readily available in one package. ... It’s better LOCAL stories, better writing, better editing and better graphics. In short it’s what people want to know, packaged in a creative way. And, yes, it’s the good packaged with the bad."

Davis has won praise and awards for his investigative reporting, but he is not above bending the traditional rules of editing, out of respect and compassion for readers and contributors. "This week a man brought by a full typed page in which he told of his love and respect for a friend who had recently died," he also writes in the column. "It was not written in the best of prose, but it was written from the heart. He sort of missed the English language in quite a few ways as he sought my help to lead his soul speak for him. ... Editing would have killed that letter. It was not edited. It was published." (Read more) Tuskegee is a town of 12,000 in a county of 24,000.

Another view: On his Curious Capitalist blog for Time magazine, Justin Fox (left) says small-town newspapers are thriving not because they're better, but because they happen to be located in small towns: No Craigslist; older, less transient populations; less Internet and broadband use; and less competition than in major markets dwarfs. Fox cites print competition, but we would also add that lack of TV competition can help, too.