It’s no surprise that newspapers are in for a rough year—like the rest of us–and then some. It has been a difficult decade for newspapers, from the shift from trusted classified revenue to web-based community style solutions like Craigslist to the steady attrition of local print advertising. Sign of the times: Today, I read that the Seattle P-I will stop publishing if it isn’t sold in the next 60 days.

My long ago college professor, Tom Johnson—who is one of the co-founders of the Institute for Analytic Journalism–sent me a great link last

The article traces the context of the current newspaper media crisis, not the least of which is the need for a revolutionary business model: According to a number of Wharton faculty who have followed the subject, someone will have to come up with a new business model that pays for the sometimes costly work of gathering news while also squeezing a profit out of a readership whose options include the entire world wide web.” The Wharton team suggests some very interesting models that may bring the bucks back.

Undoubtedly, we are all troubled by, as the authors put it: “The problem, from a business point of view, is that few of today’s eager, fickle readers are willing to pay for their online news.” Certainly, in the eContent business, we provide valuable stuff that people pay for, but keeping our eyes focused on the most effective models is what will keep us in business for decades to come—come what may in the way of technology. This Speaker Roster  at this year’s Buying & Selling eContent conference includes some of the leaders in making money from digital content, not the least of whom is my friend, Rafat Ali founder of ContentNext, which was recently acquired by the forward-thinking Guardian Media Group. Join us at the event in which attendee voices bring as much to the conversation as the stellar speakers.

Times like these, content publishers need to be looking for ways to cut costs to whether the storm. I’ll be keeping a lookout for interesting ideas that can help in this regard, like this Q&A over at Publishing Executive, in which United Business Media’s SVP of Manufacturing discusses Her Company’s Cost-Reduction Strategies. Yet we can’t be an industry that solely relies on fat trimming to get by. Frankly, from what I see, this industry wasn’t exactly portly to begin with. In large part, that is because of the ongoing struggle to monetize web-based content in a way that actually supports its creation. Sure user-generated reviews are free, but there are a whole lot of professionals out there who still need vetted, quality content. That said, we have worked incredibly hard to bring you strategies for fresh thinking about digital content, to help your company do more than cut, but to (perhaps cautiously) build upon your strengths and fully leverage the opportunities that “eContent” as to offer. Take a look at this year’s BSeC Program and get a glimpse of the possibilities. Yes, it will be a difficult year, but at the end we want our companies to be more than skeletal remains; we them to be lean, (earning) green, fighting machines.