Study: shrinking newsrooms hurting papers' quality

The results show that papers carry fewer stories on foreign and national news and devote less space to business, science and arts reporting, and many have reduced the crossword puzzle and eliminated television and stock listings.

Many editors said they must ask reporters to cover more beats, reducing their ability to produce authoritative stories. Others said, in what may create a vicious circle, that staff cutbacks reduce their ability to shape coverage to fit their communities' needs, and Ureneck said that coverage is shrinking.

"This is a strategic move not driven by lack of demand but (by) a revenue model that is broken," Ureneck said.

Still, 56 percent of the editors surveyed said their news product is better than it was three years ago because coverage is more targeted.

"There's an improvement in enterprise, in investigations and in the coverage of several core beats," the study quoted an unnamed editor of a large metropolitan daily talking about his staff's coverage, not the makeup of the paper overall.

Local news is "very essential" to their product, according to 97 percent of editors surveyed, and they said that's where they're putting a larger share of their shrinking resources.

"They are giving a greater piece of a smaller pie to local news," Ureneck said. That makes sense because where they can "develop the most expertise and strongest bond with readers is covering the local community."

The newsroom is much younger than three years ago, and reporters are more technology savvy and able to meet the demands of print and online stories, according to the study.

Editors once leery of producing content for the Web are increasingly embracing its potential to diversify readership and improve journalism, even if it sometimes saps print resources.

"Editors feel torn between the advantages the Web offers and the energy it consumes to produce material often of limited or even questionable value," the study said.