The Scorched Earth has come to a newspaper near you.

The internet is filled with news about the news. It turns out that last week was a tragic one for newspaper employment, as 1000 newspaper-related layoffs were announced, probably to help prop up flagging stock prices. Timothy Egan in his NY Times blog makes the point that even though the reach of newspapers through their online divisions has their content consumed by more people than ever, the financial reality of steeply-declining ad sales in their “ink on paper” editions is ruining these once-great editorial machines.

The other big story in media this week is the gigantic $400 million contract that Rush Limbaugh received. It extends his deal through the 2016 presidential election year and perhaps is a good indicator of where that other old medium, radio is going.

So let’s do a little hand-wringing.

Is the collapse of the newspaper-industry some kind of political backlash caused by the diversity of shared values of a populous unwilling to be force-fed group-think crafted in a liberal template? Perhaps it’s too many greedy corporate publishers unwilling to accept less than a 20% margin on their cash cows. Maybe it is the typical “horse and buggy” American-story of technology passing by the operators unwilling or unable to change. Or is it that this is just a transition time where these great media content generators are ramping up their business plans getting ready for the big profit windfalls in the online space.

I’m hoping that it’s the latter, but I don’t know how many will survive to get through this painful time. Here’s the deal: most of the cost of generating a daily paper is not necessarily in the editorial staff; think of all the press men, distribution system, sales, etc. that it takes to get that paper to your stoop. The problem is that most of these huge operations are dependent on charging incredibly expensive rates for their ad space, so when advertisers divert their money from newspapers to the internet, at double-digit percentage pace mind you, it’s a sucker-punch to their operations.

At the other end of the continuum you have consumers who supposedly will not pay for content on the web, and the ad rates for media websites exchange, in the words of NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker, “analog dollars for digital pennies.” There are, however, examples of lots of money to be made online for selling content, and remember, Google wouldn’t be one of the largest-cap companies in the world if it wasn’t profitable.

So what’s going to happen? I do think that the newspaper and for that matter, television and radio will continue to exist (unless environmentalists start attacking newsprint, ala the current “no plastic water bottles” fight). There will be a great consolidation that will continue. Perhaps in the next ten years local personalities on radio and television will start to become rare, which makes Rush’s contract a solid bet, yet doesn’t bode well for the traditional media job market.

The online space is going to be more expensive. The thought on Web 3.0 is that if people are willing to pay over $100 a month for cable TV, and internet access, they would pay for high-quality content streamed over their phone or computer. Rush figured this out a long time ago; those couple hundred thousand subscriptions at $50 a pop really start to add up for El Rushbo.

There’s the point; it’s content, content, content. Ida Tarbell’s expose of Standard Oil brought the monopoly down and sold a ton of McClure’s Magazines. How many dimes and quarters were spent at newsstands in the Big Apple just so the reader could get enthralled by Jimmy Breslin? Like him or not, but Howard Stern is the single biggest reason why Sirius satellite radio has survived. People are willing to pay for, and advertisers want to allied with, great content. It’s always been this way, and it will be in the future, even if the delivery systems are different.