The News & Observer is taking major hits in its news room due to declining sales and budget cut backs.

There’s no getting around it: The job cuts and other changes announced by The News & Observer last week mean that readers will be getting less. Specifically:

* Less local news
* Fewer late sports scores and less late-breaking news
* One less page of op-ed opinion each week.
* Less business news.
* All told, 14 fewer pages per week.

Those and some other less noticeable effects are the consequence of the ongoing financial meltdown in the newspaper business that finally caused McClatchy Newspapers, The N&O’s parent company, to announce job reductions of 10 percent across its 30 newspapers. McClatchy previously avoided the layoffs that had reduced staffing at most other newspaper companies.

Mary Newsom, an Associate Editor of the Observer, posted on her blog a blurb explaining how she doesn’t at all feel it’s a loss of MSM integrity. She instead blames Craigslist type classified sites for a drop in revenue.

While this is probably true to an extent, I believe new media has alos played a significant role in the papers tanking level of influence and success. I mean, just look at what I quoted above for example. When was the last time you went to your local newspaper’s website to get the late-breaking baseball scores? Or late-breaking news for that matter? I use feeds or mobile versions of late-breaking news sites for that, not my hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune.

The News & Observer will be covering less local news as well. The fact is, bloggers are now doing a hell of a job covering local news. In fact, many bloggers are doing a far better job than newspapers EVER did. Business news? Who reads the local newspapers for business news? We have something called the internet for that!

Mark my words… more and more newspapers will begin to take these actions. The demise of print media is well under way.