Back in October, I noted that the New York Times might be headed towards bankruptcy in the near future based on a post my pal Cara Ellison made back in August.

"Cara correctly predicted that the New York Times would be downgraded to junk, but is she correct that the paper is destined to collapse? Maybe. It certainly seems hard to see how a fading business with over a billion dollars of debt, in a dying industry, is going to keep its head above water when it only made 10 million dollars last quarter.

As far as I'm concerned, the New York Times can't go belly-up fast enough to suit me -- and that goes for most of the rest of the mainstream media outlets out there."

According to Michael Hirschorn at the Atlantic, the Old Grey Lady's print edition could conceivably fold by this May,

Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business--like, this May?

It's certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400million in debt. With more than $1billion in debt already on the books, only $46million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company's debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper's future doesn't look good.

"As part of our analysis of our uses of cash, we are evaluating future financing arrangements," the Times Company announced blandly in October, referring to the crunch it will face in May. "Based on the conversations we have had with lenders, we expect that we will be able to manage our debt and credit obligations as they mature." This prompted Henry Blodget, whose Web site, Silicon Alley Insider, has offered the smartest ongoing analysis of the company's travails, to write: "'We expect that we will be able to manage'? Translation: There's a possibility that we won't be able to manage."

Hirschorn goes on ask, "What's next?"

Regardless of what happens over the next few months, The Times is destined for significant and traumatic change. At some point soon--sooner than most of us think--the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. And it will likely have plenty of company. In December, the Fitch Ratings service, which monitors the health of media companies, predicted a widespread newspaper die-off: "Fitch believes more newspapers and news­paper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010."

The collapse of daily print journalism will mean many things. For those of us old enough to still care about going out on a Sunday morning for our doorstop edition of The Times, it will mean the end of a certain kind of civilized ritual that has defined most of our adult lives. It will also mean the end of a certain kind of quasi-bohemian urban existence for the thousands of smart middle-class writers, journalists, and public intellectuals who have, until now, lived semi-charmed kinds of lives of the mind. And it will seriously damage the press's ability to serve as a bulwark of democracy. Internet purists may maintain that the Web will throw up a new pro-am class of citizen journalists to fill the void, but for now, at least, there's no online substitute for institutions that can marshal years of well-developed sourcing and reporting experience--not to mention the resources to, say, send journalists leapfrogging between Mumbai and Islamabad to decode the complexities of the India-Pakistan conflict.

A few honest questions: how many truly big stories does the average paper break in a year? How much of their reporting is humdrum and could be done by anybody with a phone? Why wouldn't a half-dozen "best-of-the-best" reporters from a few organizations do just as good a job covering stories overseas as 100 reporters from across the country? Isn't that the whole idea behind organizations like the Associated Press?

Most importantly, why should we expect an "online substitute for institutions that can marshal years of well-developed sourcing and reporting experience" when there's no need for it right now? The market is over saturated with deep pocketed newspapers providing that service, so it doesn't make much sense to try to compete with them. When there is a need for it, it'll be developed. That's how capitalism works with everything else and it's how it'll work with the media.

Long story, short: change is coming to the newspaper business, but there's no need to fear it. We do need a free press and so, even if many newspapers turn out to be too slow-footed to adapt to the changing environment -- nimbler, better suited organizations will spring up to fill the gaps -- and quite frankly, the country will probably be better served by it.