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Jim Weeks, who runs the New York Times Co.'s 21 regional newspapers in six states, is bullish on his business and is looking to expand his stable. "The future is local, local, local, and nobody is going to out-local us," he says. Whether this local news ends up being on actual paper in the future, though, is anybody's guess. "We are the primary source of news in our markets," says Weeks. "If we have to do that with Web pages, we'll do that. If we have to do it with video feeds, we'll do that."

Virtually every big paper has made a foray into the online world. "The name of our business is how many eyeballs look at our content," says Howard Tyner, editor of the Chicago Tribune. "If you look just at ink on paper, the number of eyeballs is going down. But to all the people thumping their breast about the end of the daily newspaper, I say, 'Phooey.'" He whips out plans for a $7 million renovation of the Tribune building that will bring the company's print, Internet and cable operations into close contact with one another. Nine companies, including Hearst, the New York Times Co. and the Washington Post Co., are participating in the New Century Network, a project that connects local papers. The privately held Newhouse chain, which owns 26 daily papers, while pouring money into its newsroom operations at New Jersey's Star-Ledger, in Newark, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is also giving its online services a push. "What we are trying to do is reinvent the paper to the extent it is necessary to come up with a product that people in the '90s think is valuable and essential," says Star-Ledger editor Jim Willse.

Valuable and essential are ever shifting concepts. As more people spend their time sitting in front of screens, be they computer or television, the argument that newspapers are indispensable becomes harder to make. But industry analysts caution against undue pessimism. "More than 50% of households still receive a newspaper," says Michael Wolf, top media analyst at Booz, Allen & Hamilton. "A lot of people still want to know not just what happened but why it happened." In other words, editors need to worry not about things they cannot control--such as being faster than cnn, splashier than Entertainment Tonight or more interactive than Suck. "Where we are still unchallenged," notes Inquirer editor Maxwell King, "is being the best explainer of the news."

--Reported by Ann Blackman/Washington, Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles, Mubarak Dahir/Philadelphia, Tammerlin Drummond/Miami, James L. Graff/Chicago and Elaine Rivera/New York