Newsweek unveiled its redesign just two weeks ago, but the company is already shaking things up big on the content side. Exhibit A: The June 8th issue will feature political satirist/professional Bill O'Reilly impersonator Stephen Colbert. This is newsworthy for two reasons: 1.) It's the first guest editor in the history of the magazine and 2.) The guest editor is a fake person of sorts -- a persona created by a comedian to mock the right-wing and expose hypocrisy.

Editor Jon Meacham told The New York Observer that "I was just very impressed with the range of his knowledge and he had an almost encyclopedic feel for anything that came up. As we think about ways to both inform and surprise readers of the magazine, the notion of having him as a guest editor seemed like a good one."

The headline in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) couldn't be any more dramatic: "Baseball writers brace for the end."

Wire reports and bloggers are rapidly replacing beat writers in all but the most die-hard cities, and financial problems at newspapers are leading to mass layoffs of sportswriters made less essential by technological progress and a generation of sports fans who don't read the newspaper.

The industry standard in journalism, The New York Times, is revisiting the issue of charging for online content.

New York Times (NYSE: NYT) Chairman Authur Sulzberger, Jr., told a Stony Brook (N.Y.) University audience Thursday that the company is considering "incremental" charges for website users, while keeping most of its site free, Bloomberg News reported.

Journalism in the United States is hurtling toward a new era. The trouble is, no one in the craft knows whether the new period will represent the start of a new golden age... or a brave new world.

There are breathtaking technologies, platforms, and distribution channels that hold the promise of bringing news, news analysis, information, and more, to countless new markets and to new audiences. This holds the promise of increasing knowledge, learning, public input and citizen awareness -- as well as publishers' online revenue streams.

In a move that surprised absolutely no one, The New York Times Monday agreed to a sale-and-lease back of part of its new headquarters building for $225 million, Bloomberg News reported.

The move, which involves the sale/leaseback of 21 floors of the 52-story building, will provide The Times with revenue needed to pay-down debt and increase its cash position during a period of declining revenue for print advertisements, Bloomberg News reported.

If it takes a good man to admit when he's wrong, then I'm up there.

My error: the speed of the decline of print newspapers. They're not dropping slowly: they're dropping like flies. And the metro dailies appear to be among the weakest: Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver. Who's next?

A journalism colleague called from Washington, D.C.: his reporter sister was laid off in Denver, whose ex-college roommate, the editor, got the axe in Seattle, and on and on it goes.

The big error in news/editorial conference rooms (and in this space, I might add): the failure to anticipate the speed of the decline of revenue. It's crumbling, due to the internet and the pronounced recession. (And here's hoping it's just a pronounced recession.) The online operations of many print dailies are doing OK-to-good, but the problem is they've started from such a low base and the ad market has become so fragmented/dispersed on the web that the web sites can't increase revenue fast enough to support the increasing losses from the print daily. The solution? Obviously, stop the print bleeding. In other words, shut down the print newspaper. And down they go. It is so sad. As noted earlier, some print dailies will survive with niches/specialization, but their overall operations will be smaller, due to the considerably lower gross annual revenue (at least initially) on the web.

The Internet, or its latest version known as Web 2.0, is still too young to make any sweeping statements (also known as informed conclusions) about its impact on print U.S. newspapers.

Still, we know that newspaper readership among adults - - and among young adults ages 18-25 in particular - - decreased after the Internet came into being.

But here's a little fact you rarely hear about: newspaper readership was declining even before the Internet started transforming businesses and lives in the 1990s.

That said, it is clear that some newspapers will not survive as the Internet progresses. Further, almost all will have to substantially modify their print business models to remain viable. Many, if not most, will have to specialize in some way, or otherwise develop some niche, to retain utility.

Writing on TheDailyBeast (where I also have a column), Christopher Buckley points out an interesting correction from The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. budget deficit is projected to total $1.2 trillion this year. A page-one World-Wide news summary in some editions Jan. 8 incorrectly put the figure at $1.2 billion.

Oops! The difference is only a factor of 1,000 but once you get over the $700 billion mark, does it really even matter? And since we're just going to be printing the money anyway -- we certainly don't have it sitting around -- and foisting the bill on future generations, who cares?

But that got me thinking: How many other brilliant newspaper errors have there been? It turns out that there's an entire website devoted to them. Log-on to Regret The Error and check out their best corrections of 2008. The best correction of the year goes to The Daily Mail:

In articles published on 23 and 26 May 2008, we gave the impression that Mr Gest had contracted a sexually transmitted infection and alleged that he had Liza Minnelli's dog killed without her knowledge. This was wrong. David Gest has never had a sexually transmitted infection and did not have Ms Minnelli's dog killed. We apologise to Mr Gest for any embarrassment caused.

Forbes laid off almost 20 people to save money. It is putting its online newsroom and print writers together. Yesterday, McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MGP), the publisher of BusinessWeek, cut several hundred people. US News, which used to have a strong business and personal finance section, is going from weekly to monthly to save money. There are rumors in the market that SmartMoney, a joint venture between Dow Jones and Hearst, is losing money.

The horrible thing about all of this and the layoffs at business sections of newspapers, is that the reporters who work the business and financial beats are writing their own obituaries. As they chronicle the demise of print media, the slowing of Internet advertising, and deepening recession, they have to go to work every day hoping that they will not find a pink slips on their desks.

What happens to these people?. They will not find jobs in the traditional media, but there is a model in the newspaper industry that may given them some hope. In many cities where dailies are struggling to survive and layoffs are plentiful, out-of-work writers are banding together to start websites to compete with the local press. Setting up these websites is cheap. The reporters already know their subjects as well as anyone else. They only need very modest ad revenue to do relatively well.

Business reporters may go the same route. Look for a lot of new, smaller financial websites to open staffed by laid off writers and watch them give the traditional press a run for its money

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7wallst.com.

This post is part of a series where personal finance expert Dan Solin looks at money secrets that help the rich stay rich. See them all.

Bad news sells. Good news is boring.

Inside media types will tell you that they are guided by this basic rule: If it bleeds, it leads.

The financial media is no exception.

There is a steady drumbeat of news about a "deep recession" or even another "great depression." How many times in recent months have you read about the "market crash" or the "financial meltdown," all meant to convince you that it really is different this time?

Is it really?

In September 1998, Newsweek carried a major story about an "unprecedented" worldwide "economic convulsion."

Fortune predicted "a fundamental change in the world's economic condition" in September 1998. Time Magazine, in June 1970, opined that we were in "the worst economic conditions since the Depression."

A "panic on Wall Street" was headlined by the Philadelphia Inquirer in October 1987.

The list is endless.

This post is part of a feature on companies and products that our bloggers think are in need of a makeover. See all 26.

Every Sunday like clockwork. I put my copy of the Sunday edition of the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) in front of me at the breakfast table hoping to bask in the gray lady's take on the week's events. Then, the interruptions start. My 2-year-old son wants me to read him a book. Household chores need to be done. Groceries need to be bought, and soon the day has slipped into afternoon football time. The newspaper lies on the kitchen table, waiting to be world.

What my family's weekend routine underscores is that newspaper publishers have not kept up with modern life. The notion of a lazy Sunday afternoon seems quaint to me at times, laughable at others. The woes of newspaper publishers have been repeated endlessly. Circulation is declining. Advertising is plunging. Newsroom budgets are being slashed. Many veteran reporters and editors are counting the days until retirement.

But even though the world has changed, the Sunday newspaper has basically remained the same. Publishers continue to view this as their showcase edition. They publish the best stories by the best writers. Many of these features are long because newspapers figure -- wrongly is my view -- that people have the time to read them. These lengthy opuses win journalism awards and may lead to changes in government policy. Think of the Washington Post's (NYSE: WPO) expose on the horrendous conditions at Walter Reed Army hospital or the Times' scoop on warrantless wiretaps. These pieces, though, are the exceptions. Many stories in Sunday papers -- or in their daily counterparts as well -- are simply too long.

Of all the market changes and losses that Wall Street has witnessed during the United States' decade of errors and descent, perhaps no loss has been as costly for investors, or as lamented, than the passing of Louis Rukeyser.

For those younger investors/readers who may not have heard of him, Rukeyser, who passed away two years ago, was the host of the Public Broadcasting System's "Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser."

At its core, the show, which ran with Rukeyser as host from 1970 to 2005 and was broadcast on Friday nights after the market closed, was the first weekly television series to summarize the week's often-dizzying financial and economic news in plain-spoken terms that the typical investor could understand. Simply, Louis Rukeyser defined broadcast financial news coverage and analysis, and was the face of Wall Street for a generation.

And the key to the show's success and usefulness, along with a no-nonsense format, was Rukeyser. A journalist by training, Rukeyser combined expert-level knowledge of the stock market and economics with the temperament and values of a family doctor, to create a calming, trustworthy source that viewers tuned in to religiously. The show became one of the most popular programs on PBS, at one point airing on more than 300 stations and attracting over 4.1 million viewing households.

NBC, a division of General Electric (NYSE: GE), is under fire from John Hockenberry, a former correspondent for the news magazine Dateline NBC. In his lengthy rant in MIT's Technology Review, Hockenberry talks about how the network declined to do some heavy-duty reporting on al Qaeda, and instead sent him off to do feel-good stories about firefighters, a pattern of ignoring real news that he claims was routine at NBC.

Hockenberry tells the story of a video montage from Baghdad, showing pictures of real people who had been affected by bombs and war. The story never made it to the air, and he wonders if it was because the footage may have promoted an idea (war is bad) that conflicted with the message NBC was sending at the time.

He details several disappointments with NBC. Hockenberry says he and others worked on finding ways to enhance journalism with the help of the internet. NBC did not really act on any of the ideas, instead focusing on programming that got high ratings, such as the To Catch a Predator shows in which pedophiles are caught trolling the internet for new victims and meeting up with them in secret.

With the newspaper industry in decline and big layoffs at a lot of big newspapers, this is a tough time to be a journalist. But someone forgot to tell that to the elite sportswriters who, according to The New York Times, are receiving offers of double or triple what they earned at newspapers to write for Yahoo! Sports (NASDAQ: YHOO) and ESPN. Even Sports Illustrated lost star columnist Rick Reilly to ESPN -- for a reported $3 million per year.

The Times quotes sports agent Leigh Steinberg: "It's the exact same model as what happened to athletes. We're seeing free agency for sports journalists."

In spite of all the complaining and gnashing of teeth about the decline of journalism, I would argue that the internet is the best thing that has happened to the industry in a long time. The rise of aggregators and syndication has probably created a decline in the number of reporter jobs available -- but less duplication of efforts is good.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says that Disney and The New York Times still have big trouble, and its name is still Google.

No price is holding for media stocks again. Even though Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) (Cramer's Take) has some fabulous properties, properties that are doing well, even though it has a great growing business in telco-cable and, I believe, some momentum at AOL, this stock can't get out of its own way. This is after a monster buyback and tons of restructurings, including the exit of the music division that now looks brilliant.

Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) (Cramer's Take) is little better, even with, again, a huge buyback. This despite the fact that the anti-cable people look like they are losing the FCC battle.

Then there is big-media entertainment. Disney (NYSE: DIS)'s (Cramer's Take) pennies from a 52-week low despite having great numbers. CBS (NYSE: CBS) (Cramer's Take) did an OK quarter, not great, but it is still the most watched network and it is also right off the 52-week low. These are good companies by all admission.