My second newspaper job was at another community newspaper publisher, this one a chain of Los Angeles neighborhood weeklies that seemed to specialize in grocery store ads – at least that’s how it felt to me, as one of the paste up artists putting the ads together.

Those stints gave me an appreciation for community papers, one I was happy to revisit when I reported on the health of small daily and weekly newspapers here in Oregon for a story in the February 2009 issue of Oregon Business magazine. My conclusion: although times are tough for newspapers of all sizes, small papers are in a better position to survive the current economic downturn and changes in the newspaper industry than the big metro dailies.

You can read the entire story here: The Smalltown News.