In a word, newspaper advertising revenues are toast.

One recent article says economists are predicting improvements later this year, but the speculation is little consolation for publishers who now are eyeing another possible round of staff cuts. So there are jitters in the newsroom which have nothing to do with caffeine intake.

Will the threats affect the way editors and reporters cover the news? It's anybody's guess. But as downsizing victims in the corporate world well know, job performance and job security share a direct link.

But the problem isn't new, and that, says the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based school for journalists, is why it hosted the first Journalism and Business Values conference late in January. "It's an idea that has been percolating for some time as the economic crunch brought on downsizing and increased the conversations about margins and shared values and the future of newspapers," writes Gergory Favre on the Poynter web site. The conference consisted of 23 newspaper executives "from the news and business sides in the same room for 48 hours.

"Tribune Publishing Company President Jack Fuller keynoted the event explaining that "(O)ur jobs as leaders of newspaper enterprises is to find the sweet spot where we can fulfill both our fiduciary obligation to the shareholders and our social obligation to provide communities the kind of information they need in order for people to make their sovereign choices wisely."

Possible translation: Can't we all just get along?

Fuller, of course, is addressing the "...countless situations in which immediate business interests stand on one side of a decision and the need to be candid with our readers stands on the other." Advertisers trying to influence news coverage, or a news organization needing a zoning variance from a local government, are examples.

Fuller's argument is that people have so many new ways to receive information that the market for news is "fragmented" and the "bandwidth is going to keep exploding for a long time." His solution: drive out duplication in the newsgathering process to minimize expenses and amortize "costs over multiple distribution platforms, so that the organization that does this can be the high quality/low cost provider."

Fragmentation, Fuller's word for increased competition in news markets, is really the culprit, he said. "Not a bunch of greedy, Dickensian corporate bean counters."

"I'm not talking about sacrificing enterprise reporting or comprehensiveness or weakening a paper's unique voice," he said. "I am talking about finding ways to use the exploding bandwidth that is troubling us on the revenue side to help us on the cost side."

"Instead of personifying it in the cartoonish figure of some publishing Scrooge, our journalists should be taking control of the issue by finding new and more efficient ways of doing things," he said. "Even before being asked at budget time to skinny down the plan so that when they are asked to skinny down the plan, they can do so without sacrificing quality."