Five predictions for newspaper industry (update)

Almost one month ago, Scooping the News announced our five predictions for the U.S. newspaper industry in 2009. We received e-mails about our prediction that Denver will still be home to an online-only newspaper when 2010 rolls around. E-mailers said no online-only effort would last in Denver. Looks like they're wrong; there may be two online-only efforts.

Today we revisit our five predictions, which can always be accessed under Scooping the News Features to the right of this blog post. Let's see how close some of these predictions are to coming true and how far off we might be with others.

1. USA Today, which stands to soon become the nation's No. 2 most circulated paper behind The Wall Street Journal, will either charge customers for access to some areas of its Web site or have a plan in place to start doing so in 2010. In the last three weeks, both News Corp. and McClatchy have announced plans to start using micropayments on their newspapers' Web sites. We still feel USA Today will do the same.

2. Despite InDenverTimes.com not meeting its subscription goals, Denver will still be home to an online-only daily newspaper when 2010 rolls around. Not only is InDenverTimes.com sticking around, but more ex-Rocky Mountain News staffers are launching the online-only Rocky Mountain Independent this summer. Whether you call these online-only efforts newspapers or magazines, they are one and the same -- online news sources.

3. With Senate hearings on the future of newspapers scheduled to begin May 6, the federal government will offer some sort of bailout plan this year for newspapers. Now that the stock market is improving, real estate is improving and the publicity from the Senate hearing on newspapers has died down, we no longer see the government stepping up and helping to preserve the nation's newspaper industry. The bailout craze is ending.

4. The Lexington Herald-Leader, which has already endured three rounds of layoffs in the last year, will again experience yet another round of layoffs later this year. We still believe this will happen. Even bigger changes may come about at the newspaper. Unfortunately for Scooping the News readers, we will not comment on what those bigger changes might be at this time. We'll provide you the latest news as soon as it happens, though.

5. You will not see any other metro dailies try out what the Chicago Tribune realized was a massive mistake -- let readers review outlines of unpublished stories. This prediction is coming true. No other metro dailies have launched such an effort since the Tribune's debacle. The Tribune deserves credit for being one of the most innovative newspapers -- even if it sometimes fails -- and it's ranked No. 7 in our power rankings.