If you read anything from this week, make it the Los Angeles Times‘ series on cars and the poor, Wheels of Fortune. It’s timely, well reported and a potential game changer.

The report pulls back the curtain on Buy Here Pay Here car dealers, companies that sell used cars to people with little or no credit, charging them high interest rates, and when owners can’t make loan payments, repossessing the autos and reselling them again, and again.

In a world of instant news, it’s refreshing to read something that obviously took months to prepare. Read Part 3 close enough and you’ll pick up how Times reporter Ken Ben­sing­er describe one source taking multiple buses to work “on a hot summer afternoon.” It’s now early November, which means Bensinger and the editors and graphic designers who helped him on the package worked on this piece at least two months, if not longer. When was the last time you worked on a feature story for two months? This year I’ve worked on a total of one piece that took that long, and it was nowhere nearly as complex.

This is the kind of long-form non-fiction that’s getting a lot of hype thanks to the advent of online-only publishers such as Byliner and The Atavist. It’s also the kind of investigative journalism that nonprofits such as ProPublica began pursuing back in 2008 when the newspaper industry started to tank.

It’s nice to know that newspapers – at least some of them – still have the resources to invest in such important public service projects.

Magazine markets – Each year, the staff at the Chicago Tribune compiles a list of their top 50 favorite consumer magazines. The 2008 compilation, printed in its entirety here, is an eclectic list that includes elder statesmen of the magazine business like The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated and Gourmet, as well as newer, and in some cases more obscure, publications such as Cookie, Modern Drunkard and The Believer. The list should make interesting reading for any freelance writer looking to expand the universe of magazine markets they normally pitch.

Newspaper analysts dwindle – Another fallout of declining newspaper company stocks – the number of analysts covering the publishing business. According to this Associated Press story, “Two years ago, investors could get research from more than a dozen analysts. Now, they are lucky to find half that number.” Could the time be right for former newspaper business reporters or editors to step in? According to the AP story, some already have, including Alan D. Mutter, a one-time newspaper editor turned Silicon Valley new media executive who blogs at Reflections of a Newsosaur.

The worst of times: layoffs, more every day including downsizing at some of the country’s biggest papers. Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times said it was cutting 250 jobs, including 150 in the newsroom, bringing its total editorial staff to 700, down from 1,200 in 2001. In recent days, job cuts have also been announced by the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and many others.

But the best of times? Some actually think so. Newspapers are cutting jobs to save money as they grapple with lower advertising revenue. But at the same time, the more innovative papers are reorganizing newsroom operations to create the news organizations of the future, organizations with an integrated newsroom that will produce information to appear in a variety of forms: print, online, on air and on mobile devices.

So is the glass half empty and getting emptier each day, as some news industry prognosticators believe? Or is it half full, and poised to eventually fill up again, some optimists believe?

My take: newspapers of the future will have to act like the Internet start ups I’ve written about for so long. They’ll be a lot leaner so they’ll have to do more with less. And because they don’t have as many layers of bureaucracy, they’ll innovate much faster than they could as larger, more established organizations.

Here are a few recent articles about what’s happening in the newspaper industry to read and decide for yourself:

THE PESSIMISTS
Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News examining combining some jobs – The rival dailies are considering merging photo departments and other jobs as a way to cut costs.

What newspapers still don’t understand about the Web – In this post, Publishing 2.0 – a Website that covers the evolution of media – gives newspapers, and the Washington Post in particular, an A for effort but a lower grade for execution in moving material online and making it relevant to local readers.

‘There will be no newspapers delivered in paper form.’ – Ballmer – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s big dis of the present newspaper and magazine industries in a wide-ranging Q&A with the Washington Post published in June.

THE OPTIMISTS
Times to cut newsroom staff and pages published – LA Times Editor Russ Stanton’s memo to staff about job cuts and reducing the number of pages printed by 15 percent a week.

The future of journalism, part I – Social media and online news expert Paul Gillin’s take on what newspapers need to do to transform themselves for 21st century.

Editor & Publisher’s Best of the Web – Thanks to Paul Gillin for bringing my attention to this regular E&P column on innovative things newspapers are doing on their Websites.

Save the Press – Long-time reporter and writer Timothy Egan’s New York Times op-ed piece on the present state and possible future of U.S. newspapers. Don’t miss the comments section.

Where do you think newspapers are headed?

For the past year or so, Stanton’s been the paper’s Innovations editor, charged with overseeing the paper’s Web site and more generally, bringing it into the digital age. For Sam Zell, the paper’s new owner, and the David Hiller, the current publisher, to tap a Web guy for the top job over the other finalist, a veteran Times editor whose rise through the ranks was took a more traditional trajectory, says a lot about the direction they want the paper to take. If they use this opportunity to continue beefing up their online news presence – and make money and save newsroom jobs doing it – they could create a template for newsroom innovation other papers would eagerly follow.

But none of this is happening in a vacuum. In the past three years, the Times has seen three editors come and go, all of them quitting to protest budget cuts that lowered newsroom headcount and morale. Revenue from advertising continues to drop at the Times and throughout the newspaper industry. On Feb. 14, the New York Times said it was cutting 100 newsroom jobs due to declining ad revenue. Nice Valentine.

Stanton will have his work cut out for him. For starters, he has to deal with the 100 news job cuts across the entire Los Angeles Times Media Group announced Feb. 13. In addition to the daily paper, the group includes community papers, a Spanish-language paper and an entertainment guide. But he appears up to the challenge. In a newsroom speech after his promotion, Stanton said: “”I have grown tired and am now hopping mad over this seemingly endless ‘Groundhog Day’ nightmare.” He also said The Times would have “to figure out how to break this self-defeating cycle before it does indeed result in our defeat.”

Newspapers see the future, and it’s digital. The latest evidence: earlier this week the New York Times Co. and three other investors sank $29.5 million into Automattic, the company that makes WordPress blogging software runs the WordPress.com free blogging Website. (Disclaimer: I use WordPress.com to create and host this blog.)

According to a news report, the Times was the smallest of the four investors – the others were venture capital firms. But the deal solidifies the paper’s existing relationship with Automattic, which the Times uses to host about 50 blogs, as well as About.com, the Internet information service it acquired in 2005.

As the Times investments illustrate, newspapers’ embrace of digital media has moved beyond erecting Web sites and asking reporters to write blogs. Consider:

• E.W. Scripps, the Cincinnati media conglomerate, is so jazzed about the prospects of its TV and online ventures the company is set to spin them off into a separate public company later this year.
• Ruport Murdoch, new owner of the Wall Street Journal, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday that he will keep subscriptions for the paper’s online version, though prices will be higher and some “commodity” financial information will be free.
• I’ve already written about how the Los Angeles Times’ Innovations (read Web site) editor, Russ Stanton, is being mentioned as a front runner for the now vacant editor-in-chief gig.

At the same time, newspapers’ economic prospects are looking dim. The latest on that front: the Orange County Register, my old stomping grounds and the place I got started as a tech reporter, is killing its stand-alone Business section and folding it into the News section in one of several cost-cutting measures. When it does, it’ll be the only major daily in the country without a separate Business section. Ouch.

What does it mean for freelancers? Bone up on your coding skills. Seriously, as newspapers go through this transition to digital, it’s more important than ever to keep up with the times, and the Times. Maintaining a blog is one way. Seeking out Web-based work is another. If you don’t believe me, this blog post from Publishing 2.0 called The Only Way for Journalists to Understand the Web is Use It says it a lot more eloquently than I can.

That leads me back to Automattic. The investment is great news for the two-year-old start up, whose major competition includes Blogger, which Google bought in 2003. Other blogging software makers don’t have such deep pockets, but there are a lot of them, including Six Apart, which makes Movable Type and TypePad, plus a host of smaller proprietary and open-source blogging software makers. Automattic said it will use the investment to beef up projects like Akismet, a blog comment spam blocker.

 Updated on February 27, 2008: Thanks to the sharp-eyed reader who pointed out that WordPress is open source software. Automattic uses it to run the WordPress.com blogging Website.

It’s the worst of times at the Los Angeles Times. James O’Shea, the paper’s editor in chief resigned last week after a budget dispute with publisher David Hiller. This comes a month after real estate mogul Sam Zell took control of the paper and the rest of the Tribune Co. It’s the latest skirmish in a long and losing battle to keep the paper’s newsroom in tact in the face of changing ownership, economic woes and the evolution of the news business.

One possible bright spot: a report out this week that one of the two top candidates to replace O’Shea is Russ Stanton, a long-time business editor and reporter who’s been the paper’s Innovations editor for the past year. This is exciting for a couple reasons. First, Stanton is great. I worked with him in the early 1990s at the Orange County Register. He’s a smart, stand up guy. Second, the very fact that the powers that be would consider the editor of LATimes.com as a candidate for the paper’s top job means they get how important the online news biz is to the long-term health of the paper.

On the other hand, the LA Times has had four editors – and three publishers – since Tribune Co. acquired it from the Chandler family in 2000. With another new owner, declining revenues and abysmal staff morale, who’d want to be in charge?

Whatever happens, it’s putting Stanton and the paper’s Internet business in the spotlight, and that’s a good thing.