Fitz & Jen

One of the better places to stop and check what's happening in the business is the new (couple of months old) blog by Mark Fitzgerald and Jennifer Saba of Editor & Publisher. This one's now hosted by Nielsen Business Media (finally, E&P's getting on board with the idea of blogging).

They do a good job of zeroing in on the business aspects of the business and let the screechers and doomsayers peddle their wares elsewhere.

Two interesting things of recent note from the blog:

• Except for the triple-digit Washington Post stock, every other major newspaper company is now trading for less than $10. (And several, most recently Gatehouse, have headed off the major exchanges and onto the penny-stock pink sheets.)
• Cnet technology columnist Don Reisinger's take on what happens to the newspaper industry. The flippant tone is sure to infuriate some newspaper execs, but listen carefully. In many ways he just echoes what many of us have said -- that the papers most in danger are the mid-market ones who are caught between the life-saving cash flow of print but the cash-draining needs of doing an online operation right (cash draining because in many markets we still have not reached the critical mass needed to make those operations solidly profitable, though many do have positive cash flow). Watch it below: