It’s so obvious you might miss it happening before your eyes. After years of gloom and doom forecasts for the newspaper business it’s finally go time. The Rocky Mountain News and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer have stopped printing. The New York Times is cutting jobs, slashing pay, freezing dividends and selling off assets.

Now that the new crop of local sites like EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger, Examiner and Patch have begun replacing your hometown rag we put out of our minds the matter of when and consider how well.

Trends